Wrong Side of Heaven
by Ice Queen1
Summary: Reboot 2018: After an anything but run of the mill convoy run, Magnum, Rick, TC, and Nuzo find themselves on the hunt for an elusive and possibly fabled terrorist known only as Jahangir - World Conqueror, a terrorist who is rumored to be behind some of the most devastating attacks in the Kunar province. Deals with their time as POWs.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Okay, so my long awaited (ha!) debut of the prequel I've been toying with ever since the pilot episode, filling in my entire head canon for how they wound up as POW's. Many thanks to blazeofobscurity on Tumblr for putting up with the many, many, *many* pestering questions at all hours of the day to dissect random plot points, and mmorgan317 who offered to help after I made a request, and then I was a bad person and totally spaced on messaging her. So a few things: one, Afghanistan the country is as much a character in this as any person. The Dari that Thomas is speaking is actual Dari from a translator, but it's written phonetically for the Roman alphabet, since Dari is written in Perso-Arabic script, so there's probably going to be a little lost in translation. All the facts about the Hazara, the descriptions of how Kabul used to be before the Russians invaded, the towns described, all of those are real. Even the incident with the little girl is a very real, too often occurring incident. Academi is more widely known by its previous name: Blackwater. They are also real. Also, these guys are in the military, and we military do so love to swear. It's very, very toned down compared to what you would actually hear in situations like this, but fair warning, the guys swear in this. The other thing is that in this fic, there's terms used by military members to refer to members of the Taliban that are less than favorable. This is just for the sake of accuracy and authenticity, and by no means reflects a personal opinion. Which leads me to a final point of vocab: there's a fair amount of military lingo - I'm ex-Navy, so I don't know the Marine terminology for a lot, but if you have questions about what certain words mean or reference, please let me know, and I will explain them (but I think I managed to work the explanations for the dodgy ones into dialogue). Also, the title is from a Five Finger Death Punch song called "Wrong Side of Heaven". You should go check it out - it heavily inspired a lot of this.

Anyway. Enough delays. ONWARDS!

* * *

"So you're telling me, you HALO jumped into North Korea –" Masters asked, scribbling as fast as he could in his notebook, writing indecipherable to anyone who tried to read it except for him, "for what? A possible defector? I didn't even know we had actionable intel from there."

"Details are classified," Magnum reminded. "And the HALO jump was to avoid surveillance. That DMZ is a pretty… _effective_ deterrent to getting over there by conventional means."

"And HALO stands for…" Robin prompted, hardly glancing up from his notes.

Rick grumbled irritably from the gunner turret of the Humvee. He was busy as a lookout, ready with the MK19, head on a swivel keeping an eye out for possible insurgents, IED's or ambush possibilities. It also meant that he wasn't really _in_ the Humvee – all they could see of him was from the waist down as his top half was above the roof, protected by the weapons shield. "For the love of God, Masters, I thought you were a war correspondent. We've been over the acronyms like a thousand times."

"I have a poor memory," Robin protested. He smirked over at Magnum, and Magnum tried not to laugh. Robin knew damn well what all of the acronyms were for – he'd been in and out of the Middle East and North Africa for the better part of six years. For whatever reason though, he and Rick just liked to needle at one another like bitter siblings, and one of the easiest ways for Robin to do it was feign ignorance.

"It stands for **_h_** _igh **a** ltitude **, l** ow **o** pening_," Rick reminded. "And aren't you a photographer? Why are you asking about missions from years ago?"

"No reason," Masters replied innocently.

The half-filled notebook said otherwise, but Magnum didn't mention it.

"Besides," Robin continued, finally glancing up to peer put the tiny window of the Humvee. "It gets boring back here, I need to make conversation somehow."

"Boring is good, Masters," TC reminded from the driver seat. "Boring is _very_ good."

Rick laughed at that. "Yeah, you want to trade seats? Maybe come be a human bullseye for a little while? Get that heart rate up?"

"Nope. Nope, I'm good. You're doing a bang up job," Robin quickly conceded.

"Ignoring the poor word choice, how about _you_ tell us something?" Rick said. "You're from Hawaii, right? Tell us a little something about the island life so we can imagine we're on vacation somewhere nice instead of a god-forsaken desert wasteland."

Nuzo rolled his eyes at that description, but regrettably, Rick wasn't far off, even if he was being sarcastic. The constant fighting for more than thirty years – and that was only when the Americans started measuring the conflicts – Afghanistan's beautiful cities and countryside now looked like something in a post-apocalyptic movie.

Pictures of Kabul in the seventies looked like any other European city at the time. Women wore shorts and skirts, they attended schools – including college. Not every man had a beard or a turban. Cars from Europe and America drove through the streets. It even had part of the Hippie Trail run straight through it. Visitors and tourists were welcome, and movies played in the cinema dubbed in Farsi - cowboy westerns were always a favorite. Kite tournaments took place every year from the rooftops and streets of Kabul for both children and adults.

After the Russians invaded in 1979, it was the beginning of the end.

Now Kabul, Herat, Kandahar – shells of their former glory. Buildings lay in crumbled ruins while children played among them. Women in veils begged on the streets, the only legal way they were allowed to support themselves, and even then, only if the Taliban didn't decide that today, that was against God's will, too. Men bartered for food with their prosthetic limbs because they fetched a high price on the black market. Kites were forbidden, and the skies were empty.

They were traveling west from Jalalabad to Bagram, flanked by two of their own Humvees and by a group from Academi, a private military group better known as their prior moniker - Blackwater. Just a standard supply run, but with the increased attacks on civilians and military, they were armed to the teeth and prepared for the worst, making a long ride even longer. It was a rough three and half hour drive. The convoy had to maintain certain speeds to avoid ambush, especially in the smaller towns they passed through, and the roads weren't paved and the Humvees weren't exactly luxury vehicles, so the occupants bounced and rattled around like potatoes. Rick bitched non-stop about how his knees were going to look like they belonged to a 90-year-old man at his next physical.

Masters seemed to consider the request for a moment but shook his head. "Nah. Island stories require music and some of them are literally a song and dance number. I don't have the elbow room."

Nuzo out right laughed at that, and Thomas caught a flash of a grin in the mirror from TC.

"Oh!" Masters suddenly snapped his fingers. "I got a good question – how did you get the nickname White Knight?"

Rick practically cackled at that, nudging Magnum's shoulder with his foot without taking his eyes off the terrain. " _That_ , my friend, is an _excellent_ question. You wanna answer, Nuzo, or should I?"

"It's a boring story," Thomas said, grateful for the windburn that hid the fierce blush creeping up his neck. "It's just a call sign someone gave me."

This time Rick's 'nudge' was more like a kick. "You fucking liar!"

"It's _boring_!"

"No, it ain't – Nuzo, fill in some blanks, would you? I'm telling you, Rob, it's like something out of a Clive Cussler meets James Bond novel."

Thomas punched the side of Rick's thigh, making him yelp. "TC, Thomas hit me!"

"I swear to god, I will pull this convoy over if you two don't stop fighting!"

"He got it from the CIA," Nuzo finally said, smiling innocently at the death glare Thomas gave him. "Actually, technically he got it from his previous chain of command, who Thomas here may or may not have gotten along with as well as oil gets along with water, but it sticks because of the Christians in Action. You play chess, Masters?"

"Badly."

"You know the pieces though, right?" When Robin nodded, Nuzo continued on. "Knights are the unpredictable pieces. They move in patterns at odds to the rest of the board, they can go through the defensive line in ways that other pieces can't. They can jump over obstacles, they're for quick thinkers, and they offer unconventional solutions. Sound like anyone we know?"

Masters grin was practically Cheshire like. "So why _White_ Knight?"

"'Cause Brown Knight would be racist, and Black Knight would be misleading and everyone would think it was TC," Rick quipped, earning another punch from Magnum.

"No, that came from the fact that Thomas here has a savior complex that psychologists would have a field day with. Always a 'white knight' riding in to rescue someone," TC explained.

"I do not!" Magnum protested. The windburn was doing nothing to hide the red now. His face felt like it was on fire all the way up to his ears.

"Uh _huh_ ," the three guys chorused.

"The CIA just picked it up because that was his radio handle, and they've been trying to recruit him for the spook business for months," Nuzo said. "Regular Rosetta Stone, this one."

"I can't help that you slept through our language courses," Thomas said, shrugging. "We're in Afghanistan – it _behooves_ me to be able to speak at least one of the local languages."

Nuzo smirked knowingly, elbowing Masters. "Yeah, but what he doesn't mention is that he doesn't speak just one, he speaks _eight_."

Masters perked up at that. "Really? Which ones?"

Thomas glared balefully at Nuzo who just continued to smile. It wasn't that he minded people knowing he was good with languages. They just always looked the same to him, so learning one was like learning all of them. It wasn't until he was half way through his senior year in high school he realized not everyone looked at French and Spanish and saw words in English, but he always chalked the talent up to growing up in a bilingual household.

He just wasn't a huge fan of _everyone_ knowing he could. It drew unwanted attention from people like Academi _and_ the CIA, and it was getting harder and harder to dodge their insistent requests to 'borrow' him for certain ops.

Magnum was saved from answering when Rick whistled, loud and sharp as he stood straight, bracing his feet against the side of the Humvee. "You see it?"

The vehicle was already slowing, and Nuzo and Magnum reflexively hitched their rifles higher on their shoulders.

"Yeah, I see it," TC confirmed, coming to a halt that kicked up dust, temporarily obscuring their vision from inside the cab.

Thomas craned his head around, glancing through the narrow and scratched glass.

They were stopped in the middle of a street, in the middle of a small town – it reminded him of the old westerns and the classic showdown scenes, where 'town' was only fifteen buildings lining a single dirt road.

Except in the middle of this one, instead of a gunslinger ready to face them down, it was a small child.

" _Do not exit the vehicle_ ," warned someone over the radio. Thomas immediately recognized the voice – Academi's chief of operations, a man named Wert that reminded Thomas more of a pit viper than a human being. While vigilant and good with a weapon, he was also _quick_ with a weapon, bordering on paranoia with all the empathy of a Nazi. " _It could be an ambush_."

And it could. The Taliban was not above using women and children as unknowing or unwilling (or sometimes, perfectly knowing and willing) to rush American and foreign military convoys, forcing vehicles to stop in a classic kill box positioning maneuver, preying on the social conventions of the westerners to stop for aide without thinking. They were also targets less likely to be shot, or at least, more of a delay, allowing for valuable time and ground coverage.

Rick practically radiated energy despite being perfectly calm, keeping the MK19 swiveling towards the rooftops of the buildings that lined the single shot street. "Rooflines are clear. TC?"

"Nothing down here," the other Marine confirmed.

" _Just drive around_ ," Wert snapped. " _We don't have time for this_."

That was the sensible thing to do. Continue on. Stop for no one. Just _drive_.

Except Magnum finally caught a good look of the 'road block' and was out of the vehicle before anyone could stop him.

"And here we go – Rick, TC, you know the drill," Nuzo ordered before immediately exiting out the other side, covering Magnum from behind while he flanked to the side, moving up the side of the street, rifle at the tactical carry position. "Masters, stay in the car."

Rick mirrored his movements, sliding out of the turret with practiced ease, leaving the mounted gun unit. The MK19 was great for long distances and large targets where accuracy wasn't essential, but in close quarters like this, the collateral damage risk was too high. The rounds would shred any _one_ and any _thing_ and would punch through the walls of the surrounding buildings even _after_ hitting a target. Instead, he lifted the M16 from his shoulder carry to the tactical, sweeping up the opposing side of the street.

No one noticed as Robin slunk out the back seat, Nikon clutched in his hand as he bolted for the side of the street.

" _Magnum_ , _don't you dare_ ," Wert snarled across the radio. The Academi armored vehicles remained stoic and silent, no one exiting the vehicles, but not having enough room to drive around TC's Humvee squarely in the middle of the street. " _Get back in the goddamn truck_ , _or so help me_ -"

Anything else the man wanted to say was promptly cut off as Magnum switched the radio channels to their private one, and he knew without asking that the others had already done it.

Magnum didn't look around for a switchman. He didn't have to. TC has his back, Rick and Nuzo covered sides. The only thing he had to worry about was directly in front of him.

The little girl hesitated, standing in the middle of the rocky street, hand clutched around what was probably her only toy while her other hand reflexively grasped the air near her ear, almost as if searching for her mother's hand and finding nothing.

Her once beautiful dress was a shade of its former glory. The bright blue now dulled and stained, the intricate needlework of the frock top torn and coming undone despite numerous patching. The sleeves were dirty, slightly damp and smeared from where she rubbed it across her face as she continued to cry silent tears. Her shoes were mismatched, one too small and the other too large, but at least she had some. Her head veil was little more than a ragged banner in the breeze.

The dress didn't worry him.

The vest rigged with six bright red packs of improvised explosives that fastened around her tiny body was.

" _Salâm_ ," he said, smiling as he dropped to his knees in front of her. He wasn't entirely sure what language he should be trying to pick – she wasn't very old, maybe only three or four at the most, but he could be off. Life in Afghanistan was cruel to little things – children aged years in days. Either Farsi or Dari – both close enough she would probably understand either, but his Dari was considerably better than his Farsi.

Her broad features and narrower eyes, her lighter skin tone and decidedly Asiatic features, combined with her clothes, he was pretty sure she was _Hazara_. The Taliban had a particular hatred for the Hazara people, claiming they were impure stains on the Afghani people since they were descendants of the Mongolians, not native population. In the early days of the Taliban occupation, there were mass killings in the north of Afghanistan. Thousands of Hazaras were killed, and those that weren't forced to flee into neighboring countries.

Hazara _and_ a girl? As far as the Taliban was concerned, her only use was as cannon fodder.

And that was them being _kind_.

" _Nâm-e shomâ chist_?" he asked, keeping his tone light. "What's your name? My name is Thomas – _nâm-e man_ Thomas _ast_."

The little girl stared blankly at him, her wide, dark eyes haunted and disturbingly vacant. He kept his smile, focusing solely on her and nothing around them. He could hear Rick and Nuzo talking over the radio in his ear, but he ignored them. All he cared about was getting her to come close enough for him to get a look at the vest and see if he could get it off her before the switchman blew it. He took off his helmet, pulling down his Oakleys so they hung around the back of his neck.

He figured if he looked more like a person, less like a soldier, she might interact with him. Even if he was gonna catch hell for taking off his helmet – first from Nuzo, then from Rick and TC, and then from Greene – it'd be worth it if he could get her to talk to him while Nuzo and Rick swept for the switchman – because there _had_ to be one. Children her age couldn't be trusted to hold a trigger switch until they needed to. They were detonated remotely from an adult that waited until the most opportune moment. It wouldn't even matter if the convoy hadn't stopped – they would've just blown it as they neared her.

" _Shomâ chand sâl dârêd_?"

She blinked. Her free hand paused its compulsive opening and closing. In a small, tiny voice he had to strain to hear, she whispered _"Man châr sâl dârom_."

"You're four?" he repeated, holding up four fingers. "Wow. That's pretty good. I'm _much_ older than that." English was probably not in her repertoire, but he was aiming for tone more than vocabulary. " _Man si-o-sê sâl dârom,_ " he told her in a stage whisper. " _Goftan nakon!"_ He put a finger to his lips, swearing her to secrecy. "Don't tell anyone."

There was the barest flicker of a smile for that, and he couldn't help the broadening of his own. "I knew I would get a smile out of you. _Nâm-e shomâ chist_?"

This time, the girl answered. "Soraya."

" _Qashang_ ," he told her. "Beautiful. Just like that smile."

" _Keep her smiling, Thomas_ ," Nuzo cautioned over the radio. " _Can you see a cellphone on that rig_?"

Magnum looked at the vest but saw nothing close to a trigger. Usually they were fastened up front, clipped to the front of the vests and wired to the detonator. It made it easier for the suicide bombers to set them off, rather than have to reach for them, allowing someone to shoot them or disarm them before they blew themselves and half a street.

But those were adults with a mission in mind. This was a four-year-old girl.

" _Soraya jan_ ," he asked, turning his finger in a clockwise motion, indicating for her to turn around. " _Bar ghastan_? _Lotfan_?"

Soraya studied him for a moment, and he could see a wary intelligence start to flicker in those once vacant eyes. Good. She was engaging. He always admired their resiliency. He made sure to keep his smile plastered on, keeping it sincere.

" _Lotfan_ ," he asked again. "Please?"

After a long moment, Soraya turned, her free hand grabbing the top hem of her dress as she slowly twirled, showing off her dress with a shy smile. Little girls and their dresses were a universal constant – Magnum was sure of it.

As soon as her back was to him, he felt his heart stutter. " _Estâd shaw_!" he demanded, harsher than he meant to. Soraya froze, her tiny shoulders hunching forward as she ducked her head, obviously expecting a physical blow. "No, shit, sorry… _Mota'asefam!_ I'm not mad, it's okay – _mowâfeq_."

" _You find the detonator_?" Rick asked.

"Yeah," Magnum confirmed. "Cellphone. It's strapped to her back so she can't mess with it and detonate early. You guys are looking for someone close enough to have eyes on her."

" _If that's the case, why hasn't he blown it_?" Rick pointed out. " _You're less than three feet from her_."

"I'm one guy. Not enough of a soft target. He's hoping more of us come to her aid – or for her to go running to the vehicles." Magnum paused trying to look around without making it obvious to the switchman, wherever he was. "Or he's trying to goad us into having to shoot her and use it as anti-American propaganda."

People weren't in the street anymore, but they were still watching from the windows and from the shaded market stalls and boarded sidewalks in front of the buildings. Morbid curiosity kept people that should've had the common sense to get as far from the doors and the street as possible standing around, anxiously muttering to one another about what they thought was going to happen. The locals were so desensitized to violence, they had no sense of self-preservation.

" _Not to be a negative Nancy here_ ," TC chimed in, " _but what exactly **is** your preferred choice out of all those outcomes_?"

"The one where Nuzo or Rick shoots the switchman before he can do anything, we save the girl, and we all go home happy and in one piece," Magnum said. "Duh."

" _Can you get the vest off of her_?" Rick asked. " _It's going to take us a second to clear the crowd if we have to worry about him getting twitchy and making you go boom_."

Magnum bit his lower lip. "Technically, maybe?"

" _Wow_ ," Nuzo drawled. " _Vague even by your standards. Yes or no, Magnum_."

"Yes, I can get it off her, it's just zippered up the front and electrical tape on either side. But I can't see if there's a mercury switch, a trip wire, anything like that. And even if I could get it off her, what's to stop him from blowing it then? And where would I put it? I can't throw it, it's too crowded, the IED is enough to take out the closest civilians…"

" _So finding the switchman is our only option. Gotcha. Could've just said 'no',"_ Rick complained. It wasn't a real complaint. Just a light tone for what was looking more and more like Thomas's last day on Earth. Rick complaining was a default setting – it was when he stopped that one needed to worry.

Finding the switchman _was_ their only option, but it raised its own problems, too. If the switchman thought he was out of options, he would blow the vest, taking Soraya and Thomas with it, and half the too-curious onlookers.

"Soraya _jan_ ," Thomas said gently, holding his arms out for her. " _Bar ghastan_ , you can turn around again. _Âmadan_."

" _Magnum_ ," Rick said suspiciously, drawing out the vowels in his name. " _What're you doing, bud_?"

Soraya cautiously peeked over her shoulder at him. Her shoulders still hunched forwards. She didn't know whether or not to believe him.

" _Man mota'asefam_. I'm sorry, Soraya _jan_. I didn't mean to yell at you. _Âmadan_. Come here." He kept his arms out, crouching low so he was eye level with her.

" ** _Magnum_** ," TC snarled.

"I'm helping find the target," Thomas said, voice pitched the same low, even tone he was using on Soraya. She didn't know what he was saying in English, but he hoped the tone would convince her he was still trying to help her.

" _By doing **what**_?"

Soraya finally turned, taking a hesitant step towards him. She mimicked his smile, though on her it looked painfully brittle, like she was just copying him without knowing _why_ he was smiling at her – just that she should do the same.

"By giving him an impossible to resist target," Thomas said.

(*(*(*

" _Harakat kardan_ ," Rick ordered, cutting quickly down the shaded side of the street. "Move!" The ragged ruins of the market stall canopies were all that were left, but they offered more than enough distraction and hiding places.

Nosy and curious onlookers made the search harder than it needed to be, but as interesting as Thomas was, an American soldier with a rifle aimed _at_ you was more than compelling reason to get back inside.

His gaze swept up and down every person he saw, looking at their hands, their chests, anything that could be another vest, another hidden weapon, a cellphone, or radio. Someone who wouldn't take their eyes off the macabre scene in the street and ignored his commands to move out of the way.

He half listened to Magnum's conversation with the girl – Thomas was always the best with kids, even though Nuzo was the one _with_ a kid. Most of it was in Dari, which Rick knew some key phrases for, but not the ones Magnum was using. Knowing him, he was probably telling her she had a pretty dress or asking her favorite color.

Nuzo, on the other hand, he listened for.

" _My side's clear_ ," Nuzo reported. " _I'm finding an elevated position_."

" _Fobbits are getting antsy_ ," TC said, referencing the contractors, who still hadn't exited their vehicles. God only knew what they were threatening over the vehicle's radio. " _You may have some unwanted company in a second_."

Rick herd the derisive snort from Nuzo before he had a chance to reply. " _You mean they'll risk their manicures getting their hands dirty? Doubt it. Tell 'em to sit tight while we save the day_."

He glanced back towards the street, motion from Magnum catching his attention and he almost froze dead in his steps. Thomas was crouched on one knee in the street, his helmet in the dirt next to him and his sunglasses turned around on the back of his neck. He was clearly trying to get the little girl's attention, and as she cautiously turned back towards Magnum, Rick saw his hand go up, his hands gesturing for her to come closer to him.

"Magnum," Rick said suspiciously, drawing out the vowels in his name. "What're you doing, bud?"

Magnum ignored him, talking to the girl still and again, mostly in Dari. But Rick understood enough of it that for one kneejerk moment, he was tempted to run into the street to slap the shit out of the man, and judging from TC's growled warning, the other Marine wouldn't be far behind.

"You mother _fucker_ ," Rick hissed and felt his heart skip a beat when he heard Thomas's explanation. Sound logic as it was, Thomas just put a ticking clock on this bullshit, and if they lived through this, he was gonna _kill_ him. "Eyes, Nuzo? TC?"

" _Nothing from here_."

" _Maybe – **on your right** ,_" Nuzo snapped. " _Just beyond the pillar in front of you, haji in white and he's got his hand on something_. _Can't make out what though – bad angle. Eyes?"_

Rick swung around the corner, several feet back to keep himself out of tackle range in case the target got desperate. Men with knives were notoriously faster in close quarters than men with guns, and the last thing Rick was looking to do was to get stabbed and live just long enough to watch one of his best friends get blown to kingdom come.

" _Dasthaa balaa_!" he ordered, "Hands up!"

The man startled, so focused on Thomas and the girl that he hadn't been paying any attention to the armed Marine sweeping up the sidewalks. He spun around to face Rick, hands immediately coming up to the 'surrender' pose. " _Fayr nako_!" he shouted, waving his hands. " _Fayr nako!_ "

Rick was 99% positive that was 'don't shoot', but he knew more Russian than Dari. "Hands!" he repeated, rifle raised and his hand along the trigger. His heart was going a mile a minute, but his hands were steady, his vision narrowed down the length of the rifle at the man.

The man was wearing thick gloves, and he wasn't holding them palm out – they were both raised in clenched fists, and between the crap angle, the fact that he was waving his hands around like a goddamn cheerleader at a pep rally and the material, Rick couldn't tell if he was holding anything or not.

"Let me see your hands!" Rick yelled. " _D_ _ast häy-e-tän rä beeroon-e-pan-jara begered!"_

The once curious onlookers now were screaming, fleeing the area as they tripped over one another and shoved each other out of the way. TC was yelling something over the radio, whether at him or Thomas or Nuzo, he didn't know – his entire focus was on the man in front of him who still refused to open his hands, backing up into the street even as Rick followed after him.

" _Fayr nako!_ " the man repeated, over and over again, getting louder as if volume was going to make Rick back off.

"I won't shoot if you _fucking show me your hands,_ " Rick snarled. He didn't have to check if Nuzo had the guy covered from wherever he'd found a perch – the entire street would be unobstructed views for anyone with an elevated position.

The man stumbled in his rush, hitting the ground with his knees, ducking his head and curling in on himself, as if he expected Rick to strike him with the rifle.

What a wonderful photo op that would make for Masters – a pleading man on his knees, beaten over the head by an American Marine. As if the anti-war sentiment wasn't already at a peak.

" ** _Show me_** –" Rick didn't even finish the command. The man suddenly lurched upright, clutching something small and black in his hand. The earlier panic was gone – the man met his eyes with glare and a bright, gap toothed smile.

It was a cellphone.

" ** _MAGNUM!_** "

It was the only warning he could manage.

" _Jahangir – e_ ," the man hissed, and hit the 'call' button on the cheap cellphone in his hand, at the exact same moment Rick and Nuzo fired.

Time slowed.

Movies always showed people being thrown back from the force of a bullet. Proof that they'd never seen anyone shot at close range before. Sure, the force of the bullet entering the body knocked them back, but what everyone failed to take into account was the force of the bullet _exploding_ out the other side.

The entrance wound wasn't a near, dime sized hole, but a star-shaped split – almost like the crosshairs on the rifle scope still leveled at his head.

Or what remained of it.

Close range M16 to the skull didn't leave an open-casket corpse.

Nuzo's shot had to go lower to avoid accidentally hitting Rick if the bullet hadn't been stopped by the body. Angled down, he'd managed to fire through the spinal column.

Even as the echo of the gunshots faded, it took a second to realize something wasn't quite…

In a single voice, all three of them shouted for Thomas.

)*)*))*

Only half of his plan was getting the triggerman to reveal himself with an irresistible target.

The other half was in several parts.

One, getting Soraya to come close enough that he could hug her was a pure and simple way to offer the only comfort he could. As she felt his arms encircle her, her entire body stiffened like an electrical current seized her, but once she realized he wasn't trying to hurt her, that he was offering probably the only comfort she'd known in God only knew how long, she burst into uncontrollable tears that shook her entire body. Her hands came up around his neck as she pressed her face into his collar, sobbing.

Two, it allowed him to look at the cellphone rigging without _looking_ like he was messing with it. They didn't know if the switchman was ahead of them, behind them, above…there were too many scenarios to consider to openly try and disarm it. If the switchman thought Magnum had half a chance of disarming it, he'd blow it even if the only two people killed were Thomas and Soraya.

And three, if Rick and Nuzo _didn't_ find the switchman before he detonated the device, Magnum would be enough of a shield that the blast would be minimally contained – it _was_ six explosive packs of shrapnel, and Magnum was only so big, but it could be the difference between someone being injured and someone being killed. Like throwing yourself on a grenade to save the rest of your team.

Except, you know…six grenades.

He looked up from trying to determine if the cellphone could be detached when he heard Rick shouting, saw the man stumble into the streets and keep retreating despite Rick's repeated orders to stop moving and put his hands up.

It wasn't until the man hit his knees and doubled over that Thomas caught a glimpse of the black device in his hand.

" _Shit_ ," he swore violently. Loud enough that Soraya startled and went to pull away, but he caught her and threw them both to the ground, his body covering hers so that any blast would catch him instead of civilians – or TC, who was only twenty feet behind him. " _Didan nakon!"_ he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut, bracing for the end. "Don't look!"

He flinched when he heard the twin rifle shots, fired so close together it almost sounded like one, fully prepared for that to be the last thing he heard.

Except.

 _Except_.

Nothing happened.

Magnum didn't move, and neither did Soraya, wrapped in his arms like a bear hug. He was afraid if he moved, whatever miracle that kept them from getting killed in that second would be over. His heart hammered in his chest, and he could feel Soraya's spike too, as if she finally understood what was happening. More likely she wondered what the hell he was doing.

Strong hands grabbed the back of his TAC vest, pulling him over and onto his side, pulling Soraya with him so he was no longer on top of her as a shield.

"Thomas? _Thomas_?!"

Thomas blinked in the bright overhead sun, his brain feeling like it was caught in quicksand. TC leaned over him, blocking out the light enough for him to finally be able to see.

"Am I dead?" he asked.

"Not yet," TC said, heaving a sigh of relief. "But Rick and Nuzo might fix that."

Magnum tilted his head back, looking backwards and upside down towards the street. Nuzo was already on the radio, calling in to base, but Rick looked like he was giving serious consideration to shooting the already dead man again.

And then Thomas.

Just for good measure.

Uh oh.

"You _stupid_ , selfless, _god **damn** motherfucker_," Rick raged, marching over, murder clearly in his eyes. "What the _fuck_ were you thinking? You couldn't just, oh, I don't know, _not antagonize_ an already volatile situation? What would've happened if his cellphone hadn't malfunctioned? Or jammed, or batteries went dead, or _whatever the hell just saved your ass from your own heroics_?"

"Well, we wouldn't be having this conversation, that's for sure," Thomas said without thinking, offering a wry grin.

Rick's eye twitched and jabbed a finger at Thomas. "Heroes get dead, Thomas. I'm not writing home to your mom to tell her that the reason why her son is dead is because he has the self-preservation of a lemming."

It was a low blow, and Rick knew it as soon as the words left his mouth. "Shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Except the part about the lemming. That I _totally_ meant."

Thomas couldn't help the flinch anyway but made a vague attempt to hide it by sitting up, checking on Soraya who seemed to have lapsed back into a state of mild shock. She stared up at Rick and TC, mouth open in surprise, which was as much of a distraction as Magnum needed to get the vest off, handing it to rick who held it gingerly at arm's length. They'd dispose of it later, before they left the town, where it wouldn't cause any harm to the town or the people in it.

" _Zenda_ ," he told Soraya, smiling broadly. " _Hastêm zenda._ We're alive!" He took her tiny hand in his and made a tiny fist bump, then drew it back, waggling his fingers as he did so. She stared at him in surprisingly fierce concentration, trying to mimic the movement back. Except she couldn't make the fake exploding noise, and wound up saying something that sounded like " _che che che_ " instead.

"Only you would quote a Disney movie eight seconds after dodging death," Rick huffed, glancing back for Nuzo, who was still on the radio. He winced. Greene wasn't going to be happy about this.

"Says the guy who recognized the Baymax fist bump," TC pointed with a snort. Which became a giggle. Which made Soraya laugh. And then Thomas laughed, which made TC laugh harder, and suddenly they were _all_ laughing.

Shock was weird.

"When you knuckleheads are done giggling, one of you want to find our missing photographer?" Nuzo asked, finally joining them. As TC volunteered to go find Masters – wherever the hell he managed to disappear to - he ran a quick appraising eye over Thomas and Soraya, raising an eyebrow in question. "Magnum?"

"We're fine," Thomas assured. "Not that I know _how_ , but…yeah. We're good. She's good. We're…okay?"

Nuzo held up the cellphone he'd picked off the body. "An act of God, that's how. Guy didn't set it up right – airplane mode or something. But it's no outgoing signal."

Thomas felt his jaw drop before he could even stop it. That was a one in an…extremely high mathematical figure he couldn't comprehend…chance.

"You know, one of these days, those nine lives of yours are gonna run out," Nuzo reminded. "What's your plan then?"

"Rick already read me the riot act, Nuz," he said. He gently moved Soraya off his lap, waiting for her to stand so he could get up, brushing the dirt and sand from his frogsuit.

"Rick also give you the _bad_ news?"

"Bad news? As in worse news than we have to report this to Greene, and Wert is probably gonna throw us under the bus for breaking protocol and jeopardizing crew members and losing our civilian?"

"Found him!" TC shouted from the sidewalk of the opposite side of the street where the switchman was hiding.

Masters waved sheepishly from sidelines, offering a half-apologetic shrug. "Anyone who stays in the car is the one who winds up dead!" he called by way of explanation.

Thomas eyed the camera that was out, the mid-range lens firmly attached, the neck strap wrapped around Robin's right hand. It was something he only did when he was busy shooting so he had more range of motion to get better angles than just leaving it strapped around his neck.

He sincerely doubted _that_ story, but it wasn't like it mattered. Just as long as he made sure to see what the photos were before he published them.

"Yeah, actually," Nuzo said. "Before he tried to blow us all to smithereens, the guy said ' _Jahangir-e_ ' – for Jahangir, right?"

Thomas froze. "You're sure? Jahangir, that was the name he gave?"

Nuzo nodded grimly. "You ever know Rick to get intel wrong?"

No. No, he did not. Which kind of made it worse.

Jahangir – world conqueror – was better known to the military as his CIA alias name, _Jinn_.

The Demon.

* * *

Author's Note: Cross posted on AO3. This was a monster of a first chapter. I don't expect all of them to be almost 7000 words. Usually I aim for 2000 per chapter, but I had this very specific scene in mind. A lot of the aftermath of what would *actually* happen after an incident like this is completely ignored, because it's not compelling storytelling. Wert is based off a real guy - except he was still in the Navy, and a chief, not paramilitary subcontractor. Also, the bit with Masters leaving the Humvee comes back - possibly in a one shot separate from this, but more likely a later chapter - I didn't have him run off with no explanation for a reason (I promise). Oh. And fair warning, I tend to write *really* dark fics - I promise to leave the boys in the same shape I found them in though, so no permanent deaths here. Except Nuzo, but hey, I'm not the one who did that. However, everything I intend to do or describe are straight out of actual cases and reports from prisoners of the Taliban, so while violent, it's all based in reality - if that helps or makes it worse, just thought you should know up front.

Whew. Anyway. I thrive on feedback, and you guys have no idea how much letting me know what you think or what you'd like to see can change the course of the story, and now that we have a second season to look forwards to (WOO!), let me know what you think! Oh - and you can also come find me on Tumblr as disappearinginq!


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Here's the deal. I have been apparently forgetting a lot of the English language over the past month, and I blame it entirely on taking three different computer language classes at once. Also, should you happen to be a prior service member, you're gonna notice a lot is totally fudged on this, and I did it on purpose. The other thing is that when I was in, I was kind of a shit, and I didn't use any of the military lingo I was supposed to, and I have done my best to forget it (though it always comes back when I go to veteran events). Anyway. The Navy uses different *everything* than everyone else - different language, different rank names, different ways of referring to people, eleventy billion different uniforms all with their own nitpicky rules on when and where you can wear them...so I'm not a hundred percent sure anyone would be able to read this if I did use all the proper terminology. Anyway. ONWARDS!

* * *

"We've been over this, Lieutenant," Greene said, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off what was sure to be a corker of a migraine.

It was _always_ a migraine when Magnum was involved.

 _Always_.

Prior enlisted always made the most obnoxious officers, and Magnum was no exception, and worse – he was a SEAL who'd been to the Academy. Trying to get him to do as he was told _when_ he was told was like trying to nail Jello to a tree.

"Sir, I know, but look –" Magnum pointed to the map spread out across the desk, indicating the route they'd just come back from. "I know Jahangir can't be responsible for _everything_ that his name gets attached to. It's not feasible. It's not _possible_. But that doesn't mean that _some_ of these attacks aren't his. Like the one today?" Magnum jabbed at the tiny blip along the route. "It's always a possibility that the Taliban is going to use kids or women or soft targets to get closer to us. That's not new. But the _way_ these are happening? Hazara women and children, between the Korengal, Jalabad and Bagram – stopping convoys of five or fewer vehicles by sending the victims into the streets where the convoys have no other options but to stop, retreat, or risk being blown up?"

Greene sighed. "That's a thin line," he warned. "And like you said, hardly a new tactic of the Taliban. If that's all you got –"

"It's the same bombs," Magnum interrupted. "You know they're like signatures, sir. Even if the switchman hadn't said a name, he might as well have handed us a signed declaration. It's the same guy, sir."

"You're not ordnance, Lieutenant. And last I checked, neither was anyone on your team."

Magnum shrugged. "You're right. We're not. But Crash is."

Greene felt his eye twitch. "Tell me you didn't bring a live _bomb_ back to base for that psychopath to take a look at."

The SEAL huffed irritably. "Of course not."

Greene heaved a sigh of relief.

"We dismantled it first."

Greene fought the urge to hit his head against the table. "Look, we've tried to follow this trail before, Lieutenant. Everything and everyone came up empty," he pointed out. "The intel community, the Afghani military, hell even Hannah's contacts have come up with fuck all to prove your theory that Jahangir is an actual guy and not just a name. It doesn't _matter_ what people are doing in his name, because how are you going to stop it? You can't kill a ghost, son. It's just not possible. And I am not letting you and your buddies go haring off after fairy tales so you can get yourselves killed or worse – someone else."

"But sir –"

Greene held up a hand. "I'm not disagreeing that there's a bomber out there who's MO is to strap vests to kids to lure out American troops. I'm not even disagreeing that people are using a name to justify it. I _am_ however, disagreeing it's a _real_ person's name."

"You think this is what, a Dread Pirate Roberts situation?"

"You know this country, Magnum. You know the people, what it's like here for them, what it's _been_ like for them. How do you know that you're not just playing into this exactly how they want you to by believing it's one guy who somehow manages to pull strings for half a dozen different terrorist cells across the Kunar province? Nobody here likes one another. Half our allies are trying to kill each other. The Taliban's long-standing tactic is to force their members to be so god awful that people are afraid of them without ever meeting them. If they invent a name and pin all of their tactics on their fictional leader, then they'll have the United States military chasing their tails trying to find someone who isn't there while the continue on."

Magnum considered it for a moment, before he slowly shook his head. "I understand what you're saying sir, it's just…there's too much here that _is_ connected for it to just be the name tying them together. It feels more like a smokescreen than a lie."

"So help me God, lieutenant, if you say it's a gut feeling, I will relegate you to babysitting journalists until your time is up," Greene threatened. "And _no_ , I will not let it be Masters. I'll find you one of the worst ones I can, who's afraid of camel spiders, heights, and a general lack of running water. Your 'gut' is not a viable source of intel that I am willing to bet lives on."

"But – "

"Here's the deal – find a shred of proof that you're right, _without_ haring off to get killed on an unsanctioned mission, and then we can continue this conversation. But until then…" Greene drew his index finger across the base of his neck. "Not a word."

"So we're stuck on base until Hannah's contacts come up with something?" Magnum protested. "That could be days, weeks – hell, sir, it could be months."

"For someone so sure he's right, you seem to have a pretty dim outlook on someone finding proof of it," Greene pointed out. "But _fuck_ no, I am not leaving you idiots on base without something to do. I still have nightmares about the last time you and Wright got bored."

"In our defense, sir, I think we can all agree that those monkeys seemed perfectly tame at the time."

Greene's eye twitched. "You're going in support of the 3rd battalion and the local military on a recon mission. They leave tomorrow at 0500, and you're going with them."

Magnum gave a long suffering, utterly dramatic sigh that Greene immediately mimicked back.

"Cry me a river, lieutenant. Consider it a vacation. You can even take Masters with you. Because I am _that_ nice. Talk to Captain Markham for debrief before you leave. Wright and Calvin will be air support and EXFIL. I want you keeping an ear out – Markham doesn't have an interpreter of his own, and while I don't expect the Afghani military to lie or mistranslate on purpose, I would prefer we had our own set of ears."

"Yes, sir," Magnum said, in the same tone someone would say 'drop dead'. "Understood."

Before Magnum stepped outside the tent, Greene called after him. "And Lieutenant? Good work today."

Magnum offered a crooked smile and a half assed salute before disappearing out the door flap.

Greene shook his head. God, that kid was a pain in the ass.

(*(*(*

Rick veered left and right, zig zagging while making plane engine noises, Soraya on his shoulders with her hands in his as he held her arms out straight as TC and Nuzo marveled at the resiliency of children.

It'd taken a while – most of the afternoon – but Rick had finally managed to teach her what _play_ meant. Rick knew enough Dari to get a point across, though most of it was strictly military related. Things like "put your gun down" and "what groups or individuals in this area have expressed anti-American sentiment?", but vocabulary didn't seem to matter as much as tone.

She'd yet to take a liking to TC – he seemed a little too big for her, and Nuzo just waved them off when it was clear Rick was having just as much fun as the four-year-old on his shoulders pretending to be a plane.

"You finally have someone your own maturity level to play with," Nuzo commented from his perch on the craptastic lawn chair someone dug out from…somewhere. No one was entirely sure where it came from. It was cheap, broken in three places, and posed a serious risk of tetanus to those who were unvaccinated, but it beat sitting on the hard and rocky ground and as Nuzo pointed out frequently – he was an old man, and he earned the chair.

"You're just jealous because she likes me better," Rick said in between motor sounds. Soraya was figuring out he would turn in whatever direction she pulled his hands and was giggling like a normal four-year-old instead of the disturbing vacancy from when they first spotted her. "I'm a people person. It's a gift."

"You _bribe_ people," TC corrected.

"What an ugly word, TC. I would never. Do I find things for people? Sure. Do I make connections that benefit me and our little band of misfits? Yes. Do I sometimes misappropriate said relations to get a basketful of pomegranates delivered to COMSEC so that Rabbit fixes our equipment first and possibly sabotages Academi's while she's at it? Who's to say?"

"That sounds like a bribe. Does that sound like a bribe to you, Nuzo?" TC asked, turning to the chief.

"It's been a while since I looked up the dictionary definition of the word, but off the top of my head? Yeah. I'd say so."

Rick paused in his flight pattern, skidding slightly on the loose gravel. "Hey, Soraya, how do you say jerkface in Dari?"

"There's no direct translation," Thomas offered as he strode towards the group. "But you can try _nâdân_."

" _Nâdân_!" Soraya shouted, grinning brilliantly.

" _Nâdân_!" Rick echoed her enthusiasm. "Now what did I teach you, kid?" He pulled his hand away from hers, but not out of reach, holding it up flat with his palm towards her.

She slapped him a high five.

"Damn straight, kid. Now, where were we?"

" _Vrooooom_ ," Soraya said, trying and failing miserably at rolling her 'r' for the make-believe engine noise. Rick didn't seem to care, because with no further prompting, he was off, the girl giggling like mad.

Nuzo shot Thomas a scowl. "Seriously, Thomas? Did you just teach a kid a swear?"

Magnum looked affronted. "I would never. It means 'fool'."

"You're not a jet pilot, Orville," TC called out. "You don't fly in anything with wings!"

"Well _fine then_ , get all technical on us, why don't you?" Rick retorted before promptly stopping dead in his tracks to start spinning madly in place. " _We must go forwards, not backwards, upwards, not forwards, and constantly whirling, WHIRLING TOWARDS FREEDOM!"_

Soraya shrieked with delight, leaning back with her face up towards the sky.

"What'd Greene say?" Nuzo asked as Thomas dropped down beside him, fiddling absently with a broken stick in his fingers.

Magnum sighed. "Nothing I didn't expect," he hedged. "That we don't have enough proof to risk trying to find more."

"But Hannah's on it, right? Her people will come up with something. They always do," Nuzo said, elbowing him lightly when he noticed the faraway look taking hold. The one that said Thomas was anywhere but here, running through a million different scenarios and options and paths to take. "Sometimes, all you can do is wait."

"I know, man. I know. I just…there's something _off_ about this whole thing. I can _feel_ it. Like…" he trailed off, breaking off part of the stick. "I feel like this is leading up to something. Something big. Something _bad_."

"Like?"

Thomas threw the twig down in frustration, scrubbing a hand through almost-too-long-to-be-in-regs hair, smearing dust through the jet-black mop. It made him look even younger than he already was. "I don't _know_. It just seems like…showmanship, doesn't it? Like…there's _just_ enough to get our attention, but not enough for anyone up the chain to take it seriously enough to pursue? I feel like someone is setting a stage, and we're just…" he growled slightly, fingers tightening against his scalp in a grip that made Nuzo wince and glad he shaved his head, "walking right into it."

"Unpopular opinion," Nuzo offered. "Thomas Magnum's infamous Gut Feeling _can_ be wrong from time to time. We've been running non-stop for the last few weeks. Not that it hasn't paid off, because it has, but maybe we should take a breather, huh? Delta, Gold Squadron, they can take some of Hannah's tips for a while. It's their gig, too, you know. Maybe we can see if Rick can work his magic and he can find some more Johnnie Walker Blue."

Thomas smirked at that, lips twisting into a crooked grin that Nuzo knew the women found absolutely irresistible – he knew, because Lara commented on it every time he came to dinner and swore if she hadn't already married the love of her life, she would be the new Mrs. Magnum. "You know, I still don't know how the hell he finds four-hundred-dollar whisky in a country that bans alcohol."

"The question is: do we care?"

"Not one bit." Thomas grinned. "But, unfortunately, just because we can't go off after Jahangir doesn't mean we have down time. We're off tomorrow morning at first light with the 3rd battalion and the locals for a weapons search in the Korengal."

Nuzo whistled low. "The Valley, huh?"

"Yep," Magnum drawled, making a small popping noise on the 'p'. "We're gonna go with on foot, Rick and TC are part of EXFIL. I just talked to Markham. There's gonna be 14 of us – us five, four of our guys and four Afghani military personnel."

"Well _shit_. When was the last time we ran a mission with more than just the four of us?" Nuzo marveled. "I'm not sure if I'm insulted or relieved."

"And we're taking Robin."

Nuzo snorted, glancing back at Rick who'd given up spinning when he'd started to list dangerously to one side and was now flat on his back with Soraya held aloft in his arms Superman style, her arms out to her sides as Rick 'flew' her from one side to the other. "Can't be expecting too much if they're sending a civilian. They say what we're gonna do with her?" he jutted his chin towards Soraya.

"Aid workers should be here before nightfall," Thomas said flatly. "They're taking her to the local orphanage, seeing if they can't find a living relative of hers near the village we found her in. And if not…" he let the sentence hang.

It was a grim outlook. Orphanages in Afghanistan were packed to overcrowding, run entirely on private donations and foreign aid. Adoption under the current government was illegal. Guardianship could be awarded to blood relatives, but first they had to be found, and the child's parents had to be declared officially dead with a death certificate. In the best of circumstances, the aid workers would find a relative of Soraya's and eventually get them across the border into Iran, where they had a better chance. Slightly worse – and much more likely – was the overcrowded and underfunded orphanage would put her out on the streets as soon as she could fend for herself, which in Afghanistan was the ripe old age of ten.

The worst of possibilities didn't bear thinking on – that when the Taliban came looking for child wives for their members, they would take the girls and the orphanage would let them, because a refusal meant more than losing a child – it meant that the Taliban would come back with more men. With guns. With torches. And kill everyone and burn the building to the ground – if they were lucky, in that order – to serve as a warning to anyone that would dare deny their leaders anything.

And even if they found Soraya's relatives, it didn't mean she would be any better off.

In recent months, the American military had been forced to stop offering medical aid to locals because parents would purposely maim their children – burning their feet, cutting their arms, smashing their heads – to be allowed onto military installations to run reconnaissance for the Taliban, scout the lay of the land, or worse…came on with vests much like the one they took off Soraya that morning to take out soft targets like hospitals and chow halls.

Nuzo wondered if Soraya would thank them for saving her at all.

"At least she has today," TC offered quietly. He hadn't taken his eyes off of Rick and Soraya, the latter of which was now flat on her back next to Rick while he pointed out shapes in the thin clouds above. She didn't seem to care much of what he said, and he didn't seem to mind as she animatedly gestured towards the sky.

They all understood the cost of war.

"Is it worth it though?"

The bigger man shrugged. "It has to be. 'Cause it's all we got."

)*)*)*

"So, wait, why can't someone adopt her?" Robin asked, pulling absently at the neckline of his vest.

Normally, if it weren't for the fact that instead of a gun hanging around his neck in a three-point sling, he had a Nikon camera, Robin Masters would be easily distinguishable from the rest of the soldiers. Journalists weren't often in a uniform and they usually wore protective gear over their civilian clothes. Well, that, and the huge white label across his Kevlar vest that stated 'PRESS' in capital black and white letters. In smaller script just below it, in the Perso-Arabic script alphabet in Dari, was ' _zhornâlist'_ – journalist. Theoretically, the idea was that the Taliban was less likely to shoot an unarmed journalist if he was properly labelled.

Rick called it a Taliban Bullseye – especially since it was highly unlikely anybody shooting at them could read. Literacy in Afghanistan was somewhere around single digit percentages and dropping rapidly thanks to the destruction of most schools and rigid rules about what could and could not be taught under Taliban rule.

But today, Masters was in full combat uniform. No short sleeves and khaki pants, his clothes were digital camouflage like the rest of them – except he kept pushing the sleeves up past his elbow in a decidedly _un_ authorized fashion. His helmet, which he constantly complained about being too hot and too heavy and smelling of Fritos, was bulletproof, just like the plates under his vest, and his scuffed and worn black combat boots were higher quality than theirs.

"Adoption is illegal in Afghanistan," Magnum explained. "Relatives can be appointed guardianship, but guardianship isn't enough to basically import kids to foreign nations. And there's a lot of social and religious technicalities here that don't exist in the US or most of Europe that keep it from being feasible."

Unlike the other war journalists that they'd been stuck with over the years in their various deployments – they were inevitably on the front line of wherever they were sent – Masters was by far the most tolerable. He was personable enough that many of the villagers they encountered were more than willing to talk to him – or at least, around him or to a translator. Social customs kept many from talking directly to uniformed soldiers, but not to civilians, especially since Masters wasn't Caucasian. Once locals realized he wasn't looking to publish biased stories against the Taliban, or anyone else, they would clamor over one another to tell their stories to him. Some had nothing to do with the war. The Afghani people were extremely proud of their story telling history and wanted the opportunity to tell people about their country and their lives.

And it was almost always Thomas who was the one translating between them.

Somehow, Nuzo and Magnum wound up as his babysitters whenever he was allowed afield, and by default, so did Rick and TC.

Not that any of them minded. Robin was a fun guy, and he _loved_ listening to their stories, and when Rick and TC were around, his pen was going a mile a minute across his notebook while he laughed non-stop at the stupid shit the four of them had pulled off. He swore up and down that none of it was going into a news article – apparently, he fancied himself a future novelist, and one day he was going to be one of those authors with six houses on five continents and drove fast cars and drank expensive booze and nobody shot at him.

At least the guy had a good imagination.

"Well _that's_ stupid," Masters grumbled. "You'd think the Taliban would allow pretty much anyone to take a Hazara kid out of Afghanistan if they paid enough."

"Well, that's called 'human trafficking', so…"

This would be something along the lines of their twelfth 'mission' together, with Masters riding shotgun. Usually it was on a convoy or aide relief to one of the closer villages to base, but Greene wasn't expecting anything _too_ exciting in the Valley.

Of course, they hadn't expected anything exciting when they were running point with Academi yesterday, either.

And something still felt…off. Markham left Nuzo and Magnum to cover the EXFIL area, which Magnum already thought was a bit odd since Greene seemed to think it was his translation skills needed on this. Unless he just _really_ didn't want them on base, bored and with nothing to do.

Which…fair.

"If we're going to be stuck here waiting on TC and Rick, couldn't we go and talk to some of the villagers?" Robin pressed. He lifted the camera to his eye, squinting the other one closed as he focused the telephoto lens on the mountainside cliff dwellings. "You know where this reminds me of? Mesa Verde. Wonder if there's a common ancestor in there, or just circumstances dictating architecture?"

He wasn't far off on the comparison. The rickety houses were built into the sheer sides of the mountains – the bottom frame work the mountain itself, while the rest of the house cobbled together bits and pieces of lumber and spare parts. Few roads existed, and the ones that did were little more than cart paths and goat trails. The military couldn't drive in, so groups were forced to shuttle in by air on a rotating schedule, so the Taliban couldn't plan an attack in advance on the helicopters.

The rest of the team was going door to door with the infantry and the Afghan forces, searching for weapons in the village. The valley was highly contested territory – most of the villagers had family members in the Taliban, and no love lost for invaders, or someone from another tribe trying to tell them what they were or were not allowed in their own homes.

"Can't we go a little bit closer?" Robin asked wistfully, still using the zoom lens on the camera to spy on the group going door to door.

It was a slow process. There was a fine line between inoffensive searching and safety measures to make sure they hadn't accidentally walked into an insurgent stronghold. The Afghani military searched the houses while the American forces kept watch outside.

"For the thousandth time, _no_ ," Magnum said. "Once the village has been cleared, maybe, but the last thing the people want to do is talk to the guy who is raiding their houses _while_ they're being raided. The goal is to improve relations, not destroy them."

Masters gave a long-suffering sigh, finally lowering the camera. Telephoto observation was okay for a couple shots, but he hardly needed more than what he already had. "I'm not even sure why I'm here then, but fine. Guess I'll just have to talk to you and Nuzo. Where is he, anyway?"

"Covering both your asses, that's where," Nuzo chimed in over the radio.

The two of them had their own channel to talk back and forth, though talking defeated the purpose of a hidden sniper in the trees for 'just in case' worst case scenarios, but Rabbit set up Magnum's to be on a constant roll call – picking up everything on any radio channel for a mile radius, but not letting others pick up on his unless he was purposely calling.

Including channels that weren't theirs.

Magnum still wasn't sure that was entirely legal, or how it was possible, but the radio tech waved off his complaints with an indifferent hand.

" _You're the only one in the area who speaks or understands all six of the languages here, so the only one this will help is you. Least I can do is make sure you hear danger coming from as far away as possible_."

Staying alive was a high priority for everyone, so Magnum didn't argue but the once.

Besides.

Rabbit was terrifying in her own right. Rick's offering of pomegranates was akin to offerings to wrathful gods of old.

"Right. No talking to Oversight," Robin sighed. "Guess I'll just have to amuse myself with you, Magnum."

Thomas smirked, keeping one eye on the group as they continued their search. One of the American soldiers was talking to a town elder, but while the discussion looked animated, it didn't look violent, which was a step in the right direction.

"As long as you don't ask about adoption policies or how to smuggle children across international borders, ask away," he said.

"So, what's the deal with this valley? I know it's the site of some of the heaviest fighting, but why does this place matter?"

Magnum blew out a breath between clenched teeth, whistling slightly. "Loaded question, man. Strategically, it doesn't matter at all." He gestured vaguely with the muzzle of his rifle up the mountain and down the other side. "The terrain here is a problem for us, but a benefit for the Taliban. It's hard to get around, it's dangerous during the day and impossible at night. We can't truck in heavy troops, so we have to shuttle in smaller groups to an even smaller base. It's cold eleven months out of the year, radios don't work except in short range because of the mountains, satellites can't see in because of the trees and that's nothing to say of the caves, and the locals aren't likely to help us out because they associate us with the last people who invaded – the Russians – which didn't go well for Afghanistan. A lot of them have family in the Taliban, and in here, family is everything. Some of them can trace back their families for a thousand years or more – that's impressive in a first world country with internet access and whole companies devoted to genealogy, and here they don't even issue birth certificates. So, they don't want to help us, and they believe that the Taliban rule of Afghanistan is the lesser evil, or even better than it's been in their memories."

"So why are we even here?" Robin asked. Without taking his eyes off of Magnum, he fished his notebook and pencil out of his vest pocket. "Seems like a lot of risk for minimum reward. Wouldn't troops be better served elsewhere?"

Magnum shrugged. "We're not even in a war against a country, Rob. We're in a war _in_ a country against an _idea_. Who the hell knows? But here – use your camera. Check out the graffiti on the side of the mountain over there. Bright red." He pointed to the Script writing. "See it?"

Robin lifted the telephoto lens, searching for the graffiti. "Yeah. What is that?"

"It's a telephone number – Pakistani cellphone."

"I take it that doesn't say something like 'for a good time call Trixie'?" Robin dead panned. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see several spots in the village – on the sides of houses, on the side of the mountain, even one written on an old tree.

"Those are recruiter numbers left behind for people to call to join the fight with the Taliban," Magnum explained. "Not all the fighters in the valley are even Afghani – a lot of them are foreigners who come here to wage jihad against the Americans. Even if we moved, there's no reason to believe they wouldn't just follow the troops – to some place better, some place worse…I doubt even they would know."

He gestured with a vague nod of his chin towards the north, beyond the village and beyond the mountains. "The only significance to this valley is what lays beyond it. The Pech river is a major corridor for moving troops and supplies, and since we set up outposts here, the attacks on the river have gone down exponentially, and we don't have a way of strategically separating the two locations, so…here we are."

"You should really consider taking Greene up on his offer to have you do ops briefings," Nuzo said across the radio. "I think _I_ just learned something."

"Shut up, Overwatch. Isn't your job supposed to be a _silent_ one?"

"Someone's missed snack time," Nuzo teased. "Masters, you got anything in that vest of yours?"

"You know, I think I do…" Robin said, digging animatedly through his vest pocket.

Everyone carried chocolate in their gear somewhere. Technically, it was used for public relations – chocolate was a universal language, and the culture here operated on a give and take basis. You couldn't show up to someone's home with nothing. Besides – the kids loved it, and despite the media coverage or what the Taliban tried to spin, no one was here to create another generation of enemies to fight.

Thomas rolled his eyes, glancing back at the rest of the team. It looked like they were wrapping up their search – the village was small, and intel had it low on the priority list as a hot spot. The Afghani military just wanted help making sure the Taliban hadn't created a weapons depot under the guise of just another village.

He pressed a hand to the earpiece of his radio headset. "White Knight to Chariot, you on your way? Looks like we're wrapping up early."

There was a beat, before "I thought I told you, _I ain't nobody's chariot_ ," TC growled. The words might be menacing, but Thomas could hear him smile even over the radio.

"Whaaat? Since when? Do you _really_ prefer 'Little Bird'? You got a thing for oxymorons?" Thomas teased.

"You wanna walk home?" TC countered.

"Doesn't matter if I want to, I have Masters _and_ Nuzo. You wanna tell Lara you left her two favorite people out on a mountainside just to spite me over a nickname?"

"Gotcha there, buddy," Rick laughed.

Wherever they were, they were close enough Thomas could hear the steady _whump_ of the Venom's rotors echoing off the valley. The fact that they could even hear one another on the radio meant they were only about a mile away.

"Hey, you're _my_ gunner," TC snapped. "Don't go siding with the Frogman."

"Rick knows the winning side when he sees it," Thomas said. "You almost here?"

"One, this argument ain't over, and two, ETA is five minutes. Charlie's ahead of us, should be there in about…three minutes."

The UH-1's were handy for taking off in small areas, or just plain hard to get to places. Unfortunately, the same reasons that made them excellent evasive birds meant they couldn't hold that many people. Ten was the limit, and that was pilot included.

"How's it looking?"

"All quiet on the western front," Rick said. He had to shout to be heard over the open door Magnum knew he was sitting in front of, and he could just picture the door gunner leaning lazily against the GAU Gatling, looking for all the world like he was on a vacation taking a helicopter tour. The laid back attitude got him in a fair amount of trouble with his chain of command, but Thomas wouldn't have anyone else riding shotgun – that man had scary good aim, and if he cared even a smidgen about advancement, he'd have been a gunnery sergeant months ago. "How's your end?"

Magnum glanced around, noting that the expedition team was almost back to the EXFIL point, hardly rushing and while alert, didn't appear on edge. The search was a successful one – nothing to be found. "Another day in paradise."

"Magnum, _get_ –" Nuzo's warning was cut off mid shout as the world seemed to explode around them.

* * *

So, fair warning, I am ignoring a lot of protocols. One, because OPSEC. Two...it's boring as hell to write and I hate it. Hannah is going to be featured in here pretty much as a reference without actually showing up since we already saw her on screen, so I'm just going to write about him telling the guys that he thinks she's the one who set them up. Also, we haven't had an interest in the Korengal since like...2008? So in reality, I bet the show is going to say they were captured elsewhere, and hidden in the Korengal because no one was interested in it, and therefore, an easy and good place to hide people. I think that's all the random things I needed to clarify...if you see something else, lemme know, and of course, come say hi over on Tumblr disappearinginq.


	3. Chapter 3

Just watched the season finale, and DAMN. I kinda dig Angry Rick, and I am beyond happy they had scenes with just Rick and Hannah. I won't spoil anything else, other than I CAN'T WAIT FOR FALL SEASON! Also, heads up: there's a pretty gnarly helicopter wreck in this, and the guys are under fire. There's a couple swears in here, so fair warning.  
Also, everyone who was looking forwards to this should thank gaelicspirit, blazeofobscurity, and pandigirl, because without them, this would've never happened, and I would still be staring at a blank screen.

* * *

Magnum didn't even question Nuzo's half command – even as bullets ricocheted off the cliff wall behind where he was standing a moment ago, he was already on the move, ducked low and moving fast as he grabbed Robin's vest, yanking him down and shoving him alongside him, keeping between the reporter and the trees before he even consciously registered that was the source of gun fire.

"Stay low!" he ordered, turning fractionally towards the trees to return cover fire. He didn't have any delusions he'd hit someone but forcing them to take cover long enough for them to find their own was the best he could hope for.

They were out in the open. The EXFIL area on the top of an almost sheer sided mountain that goats would be lucky to climb, never mind people, which was _supposed_ to deter and prevent ambushes.

He could hear Markham shouting to his own guys, the larger group the more obvious target, but they had shit for cover. The winding path they had to take from the village was the perfect kill box scenario – the sheer cliff to one side impossible to scale with the amount of gear they carried, and would leave them even more open, unable to return fire.

The battalion hit the dirt, Markham shouting orders that Magnum could barely hear, but he saw the soldiers calling orders to one another, and the radio operator shouting intel to the JSOC.

One Afghani soldier raised himself up to a half kneel to be able return fire – the edge of the path blocking line of sight to manage from a prone position and he rocked backwards as a bullet hit him in the face – angled upwards from the down range position of the insurgents, the helmet

Their position allowed minor coverage, but it made it impossible to return fire without leaving themselves exposed.

"Contact left, contact left!"

He yanked Robin down beside him, shoving him back against the cliff wall.

"Don't move unless I tell you to," he snapped. "Nuzo, talk to me!"

" _I count twenty minimum, but hard to tell –_ " Nuzo cut off abruptly, and Magnum heard the recognizable _crack_ of the McMillan TAC-338. " _At least one less_."

The familiar roar of the UH-1 Venom shot overhead, so close to the tree line Magnum ducked out of instinct as it cleared the mountaintop with scant feet to spare, firing into the tree line as soon as they cleared the mountain.

That _had_ to be Rick. Charlie's gunner was good, but he lacked Rick's confidence and blatant disregard for contact rules of engagement and wouldn't _dare_ open fire with less than 20 yards between insurgents and troops.

" _White Knight seems a damnable shame of a nickname when we're the ones always coming to your rescue."_

The Venom curved around, arcing above the tree line as the roar of the Gatling competed with the echo of the rotors.

The machine gun fire was a momentary deterrent, and no matter how good TC and Rick were, they couldn't just hover overhead and fire until they were out of ammo – even if they gladly would. Visibility was shit from the air, limiting Rick's sniper style accuracy even with a fully automatic weapon, and the same trees obstructing _their_ view was perfect cover for the insurgents. They'd be sitting ducks and perfect targets, and besides gunners, Venoms were woefully short on weapons systems that could be used in close contact scenarios.

But it _did_ give the people on the ground a chance to scramble for cover.

Magnum was up again, dragging Robin to his feet by his vest, making a break for the ridgeline. Markham's guys were going to have to move back towards the village to the narrow goat path that would lead up to where the Venom would land rather than move forwards towards them, but Magnum's concern was Robin.

TC circled around, swinging the Venom out and around in a wide circle and he could hear him cursing over the radio – this was a rare team operation with people besides just Magnum and Nuzo on the ground, and the abrupt shift in tactics was always an initial jolt.

Alone, it would simply be TC getting close enough to the ground Nuzo and Magnum could hop onboard, Rick kept them covered with the Gatling, and ta da, make their exit.

Now, they couldn't have two birds down in the same vicinity, that was just asking for an RPG to take the lot of them out, which meant they had to linger longer than the 40 or so seconds it normally took for EXFIL, and the longer they weren't _leaving_ , the more of chance they had of taking a lucky shot to something vital.

That was how TC lost his second gunner.

Thomas scrambled up the loose shale siding of the mountain, struggling to maintain his grip on Robin while still keeping his rifle and his line of sight towards the trees, shooting at whatever movement he saw coming their way while trying not to fall on the slippery slope.

Charlie's chopper was down – skids barely touching the rocky top of the mountain, Charlie's gunner – Johnson? – keeping his guys covered as they piled into what space they could.

The insurgents were getting cockier, or perhaps just suicidal, the prospect of their targets escaping emboldening them to leave the tree line despite Johnson's M240 laying down cover fire enough to cut the smaller trees in half.

But they weren't heading for the larger target, or even the easier one, of the downed helicopter loading troops.

They were heading for Magnum and Robin.

"What the…?" he muttered.

That didn't make sense. On _any_ level. Taliban was all about terrorist activities, and that meant max casualties no matter the method. Soft targets were easiest, but in lieu of that, it was however many people they could take down, and _especially_ if meant taking out local military too – it was their version of showing that not even Afghani forces were enough to stop them, and the more of the local military taken out, the more the Taliban's reputation grew.

Robin's foot caught on an outcropping, making him trip and go to all fours, sliding backwards down the mountain, scrabbling for purchase on the sharp rocks that pulled loose in his hands as he went. Magnum's hand still latched onto Masters' vest, but he didn't notice him trip until the journalist was pulling him backwards and off balance.

Magnum swore violently as he hit the dirt and rocks, the sharp edges of the shale slicing through the knees of his frogsuit as he twisted around mid-slide, just managing to avoid falling backwards down the slope.

" _Magnum, get back up!"_ Nuzo shouted. Three more cracks from the rifle. " _I don't know what the hell is goin' on, but they are coming **straight for you**_."

They didn't fall _all_ the way back down, but they lost valuable yardage – and Robin's hands were sliced to ribbons from trying to find a handhold. But Robin wasn't looking back up the mountain, he was looking down, back towards the insurgents.

Before he could yell at him about _move, you moron_ , Robin had his camera up, rapid fire shooting towards the Taliban making a beeline for them.

Several things happened in the next few seconds.

Someone from the Taliban saw the label on Robin's vest, shouting out " _Hagha zhornâlist!_ " as he pointed Masters out to the men next to him.

Magnum grabbed Robin by the back of his vest, physically yanking him to his feet and practically throwing him in front of himself so that he could turn around and return fire to the Taliban, shooting several of them before he turned back, climbing as fast as he could back up after Robin.

Nuzo appeared out of what seemed like thin air on the ridge above them, his frogsuit covered in dust and the McMillan aimed back down the cliff to cover their retreat.

Masters stumbled forwards, hitting _hard_ on all fours before collapsing face first into the dirt, and didn't move.

"Shit, _Masters_?" Magnum shouted. "Nuzo?"

"I've got you covered, you get him, I got _them_!" Nuzo dropped the McMillan, letting the sling catch it as he picked up his M4, flicking the safety to semi-auto as he fired over their heads.

Magnum was at Robin's side in an instant, but he couldn't stop to assess the damage. He pulled him up by his vest, fishing his fingers through the straps on the back as a hand grip, dragging the journalist up the mountain behind him.

Robin didn't say a word. He _did_ try and get his feet underneath him, pushing off the ground every few steps, but mostly let Magnum drag him. Magnum tried not to focus on the hole in the back of Robin's vest where the back plate should've been, or the distinct dampness in the surrounding black material, or how the white text was slowly turning deep, dark red.

"Markham, _wait_!" Magnum shouted over the radio. "Civilian down, I need you to take him!"

Markham's crew included at least one medic, possibly two depending on the Afghani forces, and much more importantly, they would be leaving sooner than they were.

Markham didn't argue, and he didn't have to ask for volunteers to take the next ride – two of his own men jumped out as soon as Magnum's message came over the radio, clearing a space for Robin.

Magnum all but threw the journalist onto the UH-1, giving the medic anything he could, which wasn't much – Robin hadn't been wearing a back plate, which wasn't all that uncommon for soldiers, never mind civilians, on hotter than hell days like today – the plates were heavy, trapping heat and sweat underneath your clothes as they rubbed your skin raw through the material.

Magnum squeezed Robin's hand, despite the bloodied cuts across them. "You're gonna be fine, Rob, you hear me? Yankee is the best goddamn medic in the biz."

Robin managed a snort of what was probably supposed to be laughter, but it devolved into a violent bought of coughing, red speckling his lips as he continued to hack and heave.

"We got him sir, go!"

Magnum double thumped the side of the chopper door near Charlie's position, ducking back down behind the ridgeline as the huey took off, practically shooting upwards as Charlie pulled the chopper around, giving Johnson another clear shot at the tree line with his M240.

If it'd been anyone else, the two hueys would've hit one another as TC swooped in like a bird of prey, not even bothering to set the skids down as he pulled up in front of them.

"'Bout goddamn time," TC snarked, but Magnum could see the tense set of his shoulders, the laser gaze fixed on the shit show below them.

"Waiting on you now," Magnum snarked back, even as TC hit the cyclic, pulling the helicopter up and over in a damn near roll as he took off.

The bottom of his stomach dropped slightly at the abrupt change in altitude, like riding a roller coaster, but it felt like the best thing in the world to him. He glanced over at Nuzo, who was grabbing onto the hand hold loops in the ceiling, rifle still in his lap as he kept an eye on the opposite side of the chopper.

The two other men with them weren't _well known_ to him, but he at least knew who they were. Dallas and Matthews.

"Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for giving up your seats for Masters!" he said.

Dallas waved him off. "We like 'im too, sir. And it's not like we had to wait long for the next flight out."

Magnum couldn't help the grin.

Laughter in the face of danger. He could appreciate that.

At least they were alive.

Point two seconds later, he could've kicked himself for even thinking it, because the Universe hated it when you got cocky.

"What the… _RPG!"_ Rick shouted.

TC didn't even ask what side, he yanked the controls hard to the right, sending the Venom sideways. The chopper veered violently to one side as an RPG hurtled past the open door, TC narrowly avoiding being hit dead on.

It hit the tail rotor instead.

The entire helicopter lurched, and the turn TC put them in to dodge the rocket propelled grenade became an uncorrectable spiral, the force of the explosion flinging the rear of the chopper a hundred and eighty degrees as TC fought with the controls.

It was a losing battle.

Magnum could smell the reek of hydraulic fluid even in the open-air cockpit, the plume of thick, black smoke from the ruined rotor cutting through the sky, following behind them in their spin.

They were going to crash.

* * *

As they spiraled in a dead spin, alarms blaring warning that their altitude was off, that fuel was low, that crashing was imminent, Rick reached for his harness even as he braced himself against the bulkhead behind him.

The rigging was to prevent him from falling out in the event of evasive maneuvers, but the last thing he wanted was to be literally tied to a crashing helo, because if they were _lucky_ , they would hit the side of the mountain and stop.

Lucky wasn't how he was feeling so far today.

Inertia spun him backwards, slamming his back into the gun mount, and for a moment, everything went numb. He forgot to breathe. The world spun dizzingly inside the helicopter, matching the sickening swirl of colors as the Venom dropped faster, the alternating whirl of blue sky and green and brown mountain blurring together.

"Brace!" TC shouted, and not two seconds later, the Venom slammed into the side of the mountain, hitting broad side against the rocks and trees. The main rotor blades sliced into the mountain, snapping off with metallic bangs and screeching of bent metal even as the swishplate continued to spin. He could hear the metal snapping off and flying into the trees. The entire aircraft shuddered, and Rick closed his eyes, sure the next thing that was coming was an eruption of flames as the remaining fuel caught fire.

But it didn't.

Instead, it began to roll.

If he thought the crash spiral was bad, it was nothing compared to the ass over teakettle spin that slammed them one way and then the next, the 12,000 pounds of metal crushing the thin alpine trees as it crashed through the trees and throwing the occupants around the cabin like loose luggage.

Dallas hit the roof with a sickening crack and fell silent, his limbs flopping about like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

They hit something more solid than a tree, and with an almost comical yelp of surprise, Magnum, who was sitting closest to the door being the last one on, was gone, thrown clear of the cabin on jarring impact.

"THOMAS!" Nuzo shouted, but before he could leap after him, the downed Venom rolled again, spinning tail first to slide down the mountainside.

The metal on rock and tree sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and for a horrifying moment, Rick wondered if they were going to fall like this forever. They'd been killed in the RPG hit, and this was their Hell.

The tail boom caught something, whipping the cabin around in almost 180-degree flip that made Rick want to throw up even more, until finally they Venom crashed into something that didn't give, and he slammed backwards into the gun mount and everything went black.

* * *

Something happened.

Something bad.

But he couldn't remember what.

Something in the air burned, and he came to sputtering and coughing as he tried to suck in oxygen instead of dirt and blood.

Everything was blurry. Or covered in red. His eyes stung and his head throbbed in time with his heart, which echoed strangely in his head. Sounds echoed like he was underwater, muffled and indistinct even as they grew louder.

His entire chest _ached_ , and his head was killing him.

He tried to move. To will his hands to push himself upright. To force his legs to bend.

Nothing.

He blinked, and minutes had passed. Or maybe they hadn't, and it just felt that way. Something warm dripped down the side of his face, and he hoped to hell it was blood and not fuel.

Something dug painfully into his back, just below the reach of his TAC vest, but he couldn't make himself move away.

He coughed and tasted blood. He ran his tongue experimentally along the side of his cheek, hissing slightly when he found a sizeable chunk missing.

He should move.

Why couldn't he?

He turned his head slightly, the only thing he _could_ do, and saw TC still strapped into the wreckage of the cockpit, sagging against his restraints and unmoving.

"TC?" he rasped. _Jesus_ , was that _his_ voice?

The pilot didn't move.

"TC?" he said, louder, despite the fact that it felt like shards of broken glass were rubbing against the inside of his throat.

He was met with silence.

" _TC!_ " he shouted, and this time, put every ounce of effort and will into moving his arm enough to hit the back of the pilot's chair. " _Wake up!_ "

 _This_ time, TC at least stirred. He sounded about as happy as Rick felt, groaning as he carefully pulled himself upright, hissing as awareness returned and all the bruises, bumps and possible broken bones made themselves known.

Rick let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

The wreckage shook slightly, and Rick flinched. He did _not_ want a repeat performance, and when he glanced back up towards the open cargo doors above him, he thought he was seeing things.

Thomas Magnum was leaning over the side, bruised and battered and covered in pine needles, dirt and blood, but very much _alive_.

"How many lives _do_ you have?" he slurred incredulously, blinking against what was surely a phantom. The guy had _literally_ been thrown from a rolling helicopter wreck.

Ghost Magnum flashed that obnoxious grin of his, the one that meant he was just as surprised as the rest of them that he wasn't dead. "At least one more."

He cautiously pulled himself over the edge of the cabin, bracing his feet against the broken pieces of metal as improvisational footholds, carefully climbing down towards him. He reached out a hand to check Dallas's neck for a pulse, his lips pressing into a grim line when he found none. "Dammit."

Where the hell was Nuzo? And the other kid? Matt? Matthews?

"Nuzo is already outside. Little banged up, but looks better than you right now, which is something I never thought I would say," Magnum explained. "He's got Matthews."

Had he asked that aloud?

"You did," Magnum answered. He pulled his combat knife from the appendix carry on his belt, slicing through the harness with ease. "Can I move you?"

Rick wiggled his toes, and they responded, albeit sluggishly, and not without a stabbing pain shooting from his lower back all the way down to his toes. "Yeah, sure."

Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Fine, as in if I move you, it'll be painful but you'll live, or fine, as in if I move you, you're gonna bleed out?"

"That first one. Fair warning – there might be some tears." He groaned as Magnum hefted him up by his TAC vest, but it wasn't _too_ bad. Just serious bruising, some scrapes and cuts.

Until Magnum tried pull him up to where his spine straightened.

 _Agony_ didn't even _touch_ on how it felt. His entire spine felt like it'd ignited underneath his skin, his legs giving out completely underneath him as he toppled forwards into Magnum who fell back against the vertical floor of helicopter.

Air? What was air? Who needed air when your entire back felt like someone poured molten lava down it?

It took him several _long_ seconds to realize Magnum was trying to talk to him.

"Rick? _Rick_? Talk to be, bro, you gotta tell me what's wrong!"

Rick blinked back tears he didn't know had started to form, but was unashamed because _goddammit, that **hurt**_.

"Told you there would be tears," he gasped, his hands fisting against Thomas's TAC vest, digging into the straps to hold himself upright through sheer force of will. "It's fine."

"Fuckin' liar," Magnum hissed. "Nuzo!" he shouted upwards. "I need you to help us out!"

A moment passed, and Nuzo's head popped into view.

The chief didn't look too bad, considering. A bruise was blossoming across his cheek, and it would be a hell of a shiner when the colors came in, but other than that…he looked miraculously okay.

Not fair. They weren't even wearing seatbelts.

"Pull him up, I got his legs."

Nuzo nodded, grabbing onto the shoulders of Rick's vest and bracing his feet against the edge of the cabin. "Sure thing, kid. Count of three? One, two…" and then hauled on the vest as Thomas lifted him as high as he could as straight as he could.

Not that it helped.

Rick swore.

Violently.

In several languages.

By the time Nuzo managed to get him back on the ground, stretched out flat, Rick's jaw ached from clenching it so tight, and the blood in his mouth was fresh from another bite out of it.

"Can you feel your legs?"

"The screaming wasn't a giveaway?"

Nuzo snorted. "Don't be a smartass, dumbass. Can you move your toes at all?"

Rick gave a bitter laugh. "You know, I really don't feel like trying right now, Nuz. Can you leave me alone for a second to hide my tears of pain before you go asking me to make it worse?"

Nuzo didn't move, just sat next to him, looming over like some evil Mother Hen.

"I could move them when I was in the chopper," Rick said. "Pretty sure I'm just bruised to hell and back thanks to the gun mount."

The older man nodded. "Yeah, that'd do it. If that's the case, I got good news for you, it's probably just seriously bruised rather than broken. It's gonna suck, but you're gonna be able to walk out of here."

"And the bad news?"

"We're gonna need you to run."

 _Fuuuuuck_ that.

He craned his head to look at Matthews. The kid was alive, but barely breathing, laid out next to him on the dirt. Nuzo or Magnum had already taken his IFAK and dressed the worst of his injures, but the kid must've been slammed around pretty good in the cabin as it rolled. His face was almost unrecognizable from the bruising and the swelling. Looked like he'd lost a few teeth, too, and his leg was braced on either side with broken branches and parts of his own sleeves to hold it immobile as best they could manage.

He wondered if he knew Dallas didn't make it.

A loud crash had him jolting upright and immediately stifling a scream of pain as white-hot agony shot down his spine.

"Sorry," TC apologized, leaning heavily against the upturned side of the wreck. He held one hand up to his head, the other one bracing himself against the huey. "Must've rung my bell a little harder than I thought."

"Sure," Magnum scoffed. "If that's what we're calling a grade two concussion, sure. Absolutely." He lowered himself over the side of the helicopter, moving gingerly even as he put TC's arm over his shoulder and lead him away from the crash, setting him down next to Rick.

Maybe he did hurt himself a little more than Rick initially thought. It was just catching up to him a little slower as the adrenaline started to abate.

"We need to move further," Thomas pointed out. "Away from the wreckage."

"Agreed. How?"

Turned out it didn't matter.

 _Someone_ shot them down. Someone who couldn't have been too far, in order to hit with relative accuracy.

That someone turned out to be a lot of someones.

There had to have been at least fifty of them. They just seemed to melt out of the trees, carrying everything from Kalashnikovs to staves and machetes, clashing jackets over worn perahan tunbans.

They were shouting in everything from Dari and Pashto to Hungarian and Russian and Punjabi and Urdu, so fast and everyone at once that even Thomas had trouble trying to keep track of what was being said.

Rick didn't need to know any of it to get the general gist.

On your knees. Surrender. Drop your weapons. Any variation thereupon.

One man stepped forwards. He was a little taller than the rest, his jacket a camouflage one with fake ranking hastily stitched onto the shoulder. He addressed Thomas directly, but Rick didn't follow, and he knew neither did TC or Nuzo.

Shit creek didn't even touch on how screwed they were.

Rick was more than a little amazed they were still alive instead of shot the second they were found. It wasn't like they had any way to fight back. Not in their condition, not without a weapon, not with those numbers.

The man gestured towards Rick, and Magnum immediately side stepped in front of him, speaking rapidly and angrily in whatever the hell language it was.

It didn't sound like it was going in their favor.

" _Taslim sha!_ " the man shouted.

" _Lomre marg_!" Thomas yelled back.

It was the wrong thing to say.

The man hauled back with his rifle and slammed the butt of it into Magnum's face, and the smaller man dropped like a stone, unconscious before he hit the ground.

TC jumped to his feet, despite listing to one side before correcting himself, looking like he was prepared to beat the man to death with his own weapon.

And _then_ he was going to get angry.

There was more shouting. No one had any idea what the hell was being said, and no idea how to respond, and the Taliban pressed in closer, their leader shouting orders to them.

Nuzo had to physically hold TC back when the man kicked Thomas solidly in the side, spitting in disgust on the ground next to him.

The man gestured to Matthews, and with little other warning, one of the men in the crowd fired at the unconscious soldier, even as they shouted in protest, but the numbers were against them. Maybe in peak form with a gun between them, they might've had a chance. Instead, TC and Nuzo were wrestled to their knees, their hands forced behind their backs and bound with whatever the Taliban could find.

" _Wadrega_!" he shouted at Rick. " _Wadrega_!"

He had no idea what he was shouting. Probably 'stand' or 'get up', but Rick refused. He curled his lip in disgust, spitting out a bloody wad of bitten off skin and bile at the man's feet.

" _Khwar au zar shay_ ," he said, staring the man dead in the eye. He couldn't remember exactly what the hell it meant, but Magnum had taught it to him. All he remembered was it was an insult.

A pretty bad one, apparently, because the next and last thing he saw was the rifle butt coming down on his face, still red with Magnum's blood.

* * *

Okay, so couple things. One, translations are at best, moderately accurate. Dari and Pashto don't directly translate to English, or the English alphabet. The translations are roughly "surrender," "death first", "stand up!" and "May be destroyed beyond recognition into the abyss of oblivion!". Yeah. The number of words in the Pashto compared to English are a little uneven, but whatever. We know how exact translations go.  
Also, parts of this are purposely glossed over because while I've BEEN in a helicopter, I wasn't flying, and I paid minimum attention to what the pilot was telling me. Other things are purposely fudged for the sake of the story and narrative, especially the EXFIL scene. If you'd like to know how it would realistically play out, watch Lone Survivor. It's a whole slew of middle men, radio signals, etc, that are just complicated and for the sake of fanfiction, unnecessary.  
Anyway, lemme know what you think! Reviews are always appreciated and help fuel the muse, or come and say hi on tumblr disappearinginq!


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Sorry for the delay! If it makes you feel better, part of it was from the monstrosity that was chapter four of Bad Things Happen, and the other part was because I was working on this, just not this particular part. Despite my love of dark fics and whump and hurt/comfort, I much prefer the vague/off screen action, rather than being hit in the face with graphic descriptions of violence. So this was a struggle to show the seriousness of the situation without it having to be all...squicky. Anyway. Delayed long enough! ONWARD!

* * *

It was freezing cold. And damp as hell. And smelled like mildew and damp dirt.

When he was nine, his parents took him on a road trip to Hannibal, Missouri, because he was in love with the story of Tom Sawyer. They stopped at Mark Twain's house, explored Lover's Leap, had their pictures taken in front of the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn statue. It would be the last time they did anything as a family that wasn't part of a court case, but he didn't know it at the time.

The part he remembered the best though, was the Mark Twain Cave. Right next to their campground, his parents let him take the tour seven times, and every time, his favorite part was when they were deep in the cavern and their tour guide would turn off their flashlight and throw them into pitch darkness so thick he could feel it pressing down on him. It'd been ninety degrees outside that whole trip, but in the cave, he shivered in the cool and damp. The cave smelled different than anywhere else he'd ever been, and as soon as the lights were out, he could just imagine he'd stepped onto a different planet.

He felt like he'd just stepped back into that cave.

Rick blinked his eyes open. At least, he thought he did. It was dim and dark enough it took him a minute to realize they were open. Well, one of them anyway. His left eye was stubbornly refusing to open more than a mere slit and felt tacky and crusty against his skin.

Caged fluorescent bulbs with frayed wiring flickered overhead at odd intervals, casting shadows from the bars against the ceiling.

 _Bars_?

He tried to push himself up and his back _ignited_.

"Mother _fu-_ " he hiss through gritted teeth, biting down hard on his lower lip as he tried to keep quiet. Except _ow_ , why the hell did his _face_ hurt too?

" _Finally_ ," someone said off to his right. "I was beginning to wonder if I was gonna have to decide between the Kiss of Life or sharing my cell with a coma patient."

Rick snorted at that, except it came out barely more than a puff of air as he realized his entire chest ached, too, and trying to do more than lying there breathing was just a bad idea all around.

"Please tell me nobody kissed me," he grumbled, using his left hand to carefully prod along the side of his face, wincing when his fingers came into contact with a raised split of skin across his forehead, just over his left eye. The blood was dried and cracked, itching like mad as he tenderly tried to scratch it loose. That at least explained was his eye didn't want to open. "What happened?"

TC leaned over him, filling his entire field of vision. "What do you remember? And stop touching that. We don't have anything to clean it with and your hands are filthy."

Rick huffed irritably but stopped trying to rub at it. Still itched like crazy. "Uhh…I think I remember a firefight."

TC sighed. "Understatement of the year, but okay. Magnum and Nuzo got ambushed, it was an emergency EXFIL that went to shit. Took an RPG to the rotor, crashed into a mountain, decided to go for a spin down the side of it. Miraculously survived. Got picked up by the Taliban."

Images flashed through his memory as TC spoke. The smell of the hydraulic fluid, the screech of rending metal as the helicopter crashed nauseatingly end over end down the side of the mountain.

The crack of Dallas's neck snapping as he collided with the ceiling.

Matthews shot point blank by the Taliban.

Magnum dropping like a stone after being hit in the face with a rifle.

He groaned at the memory of that same rifle coming down on him. "Where are we? And how did we get here?"

"A cave," TC said succinctly. "I'd rate it one of five stars, would not come here again. Management is negligent at best, and no mints on the non-existent pillows. And a lot of people sharing one space." TC sighed, leaning back against the bars near Rick's head so all he had to do was turn his head to see.

It reminded him of a dog kennel. Cages made of scrap everything – wood, metal, rocks – lined a squared open space in the middle where a fire pit ringed with stones still smoked. Stringed lights like one would find in a mine lined the walls, though half the bulbs worked, casting everything into harsh shadows.

In the cages were people. Filthy, dirt streaked faces peered out from behind makeshift bars of iron and wood scraps, huddled together for warmth against the chill of the cave. They weren't locals – not by the color of their skin beneath the grime, or their clothes.

These were people that the Taliban captured for ransom from other countries. Tourists. Welfare workers and hospital staff and foreign journalists.

The cages were stacked on top of one another, and Rick shuddered at the implications for the people in the lower ones. He doubted plumbing was included in their amenities.

"And we didn't get here by walking," Nuzo said. "I'd guess three or four miles from where we went down, until they could get us to trucks. After that..." the older man trailed off. "Anyone's guess. But I doubt we're out of the Korengal. It's too good a hiding spot for them, which means it's a good enough hiding spot for us, too."

"What's our status?" Rick asked, allowing himself to drop back down, back flat against the cave floor, his eyes automatically closing against the overhead bulb. The ground was sharp and uneven, but at least he could feel it. Situation aside, at least he wasn't paralyzed from the waist down. At least there was _one_ upside to this misery.

TC didn't immediately answer, and Rick cracked his own good eye open again.

"Well, don't keep me in suspense with all the good news," he drawled.

Nuzo and TC shared a look before TC took a breath and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, Rick suddenly realized what he was missing.

There were only three of them.

"Where's Thomas?" he demanded, jackknifing upright so fast he saw stars and couldn't help the stifled cry of pain as his back made itself known again. Their cages were small, but right next to each other – TC propped him up to be able to look around and Nuzo was alone. A quick glance around the cages lining the rest of the cave told him what his gut already knew.

Magnum was gone.

"Is...is he dead? Did they leave him on the mountain?" he demanded, voice shaking more than he would like. This was war. Loss of life was expected. He'd lost more than one friend already, but not Magnum.

Not Thomas.

"He's alive," TC soothed, firm hands on his shoulders to keep him from turning around and aggravating an already serious injury. "At least he was last time we saw him."

"Last time?" Rick echoed. "What the hell? How long have we been here? How long has he been gone?"

"Do I look like I have access to a clock?" TC snapped. "I know what you know, _Orville_."

Rick bit his lip, physically stopping himself from snapping the first thing that came to mind. It wasn't like they weren't all in the same boat.

Cage.

Whatever.

"Do you know why he isn't with us?" he asked instead. There were multiple reasons why Thomas wouldn't be in the immediate vicinity beyond just the knee-jerk assumption that he was dead and left on the mountainside to be picked over by scavenging animals. Ranking officers were sometimes kept separate from other prisoners, or if they thought that Thomas had some sort of intel that they didn't. It could also be just a psychological tactic to make them freak out.

Which was working.

Because Thomas had the self-preservation of a lemming, and while he was ninety-nine percent a happy-go-lucky man who could be friends with anyone, he also had a singular talent for inciting violence with the same minimum effort.

TC shrugged. Nuzo, on the other hand, rubbed his chin where stubble was just beginning to grow in, his blunt fingernails scratching at the short, rough hairs.

"There was something funky about that ambush," Nuzo said.

"You mean besides the part where like fifty Taliban fighters somehow managed to get wind of our position and had a look out with an RPG stationed in one of the many, _many_ options for escape routes that we could've taken to get the hell outta there?" TC asked.

Nuzo ignored the sarcasm. "We know what the Talib are like. Maximum damage, maximum terror. Soft targets over heavily armed specialty units. But they almost ignored Markham's group. They bunched up on one flank between Thomas and Robin and 'em. Like they were trying to separate them. And they didn't go for the larger group with Markham, they went for Thomas." Nuzo paused, head tilting to one side, thinking.

Rick and TC let him.

Nuzo and Magnum had approximately one thing in common besides being Navy: they were deceptively smart. While Thomas was a master of 'winging it', Nuzo was the other end – calculated. A lot of junior officers thought Nuzo was on par with an ox for intelligence as soon as they heard his accent and saw his rank – but unlike Thomas who was happy to let people make their assumptions, Nuzo usually smiled, nodded, and then spouted off some Plato or pointed out a brilliant tactical maneuver that saved time, money, men, and made the other side look like idiots.

"I take that back. I don't think it was Thomas they were after," the chief guessed. "I think it was _Robin_."

Maybe it was the head injury talking, but that made less sense, not more, and Rick pointed out as much.

"No, you didn't see it – the hajis were making a move on the both of them, but the more I think about it, the more I swear to God I heard one of them yell about a journalist."

"Told you those were Taliban Bullseyes," Rick snarked. TC just rolled his eyes.

Nuzo have a quick side half-nod. "I'm not saying there isn't some room for error – bullets flying, two birds in the air in close proximity, more than a few people shouting…but journalist sounds pretty goddamn similar in Dari and Pashto as it does in English. It was either Thomas or Robin they were after, and it makes more sense for it to be Robin. At least, if they were only after one of them."

"But why the hell would they care about Masters?" TC asked. "He's not famous – he's not a household name that America would get up in arms about if they found out he was missing or being held for ransom."

"Does it really make more sense that they were after one random SEAL who, while a general nuisance, isn't exactly responsible for a lot of high profile damage?"

"Depends on what you call high profile," TC pointed out. "Together, we done some damage – especially since working with Hannah. A _lot_ of high profile targets were on that list, and you and TM were boots on the ground for all of them."

It didn't need to be said that half the time, Rick was on the ground with them – he was just half a mile away looking down a scope and calling out targets from a distance. Or that TC was more than just EXFIL. Taliban had very much a hierarchy when it came to pinning blame. The leader was the responsible one – that was who they had bounties on. Would they take out the whole team or group involved? Without question. But they were a tribal group, which meant tribal retribution.

Enough so that Rick often quoted 'dishonor on _you_ , dishonor on your _cow_ ' whenever the subject came up, no matter how many times he got yelled at for it.

"It's not exactly advertised who's responsible for strikes like that," Rick said carefully. "You know that means you're suggesting a traitor."

Nuzo shrugged. "It's a tactic as old as war itself. We got people in the admiralty selling plans for our carriers to China. You think the Taliban couldn't put the squeeze on one of the local translators? Or that they couldn't embed their own? Background checks aren't exactly a hundred percent in this country."

"But why not kill us outright?" TC pointed out.

"Who's to say they weren't trying to? How many people _you_ know walk away from a wreck like that? Or an ambush of fifty to one? Maybe they just seized an opportunity from the failed attempts to kill us. Four American military members as hostages – I don't think many could turn that down."

It was what they intended to do with the hostages that concerned Rick. Taliban didn't believe that torture didn't work. Or they just didn't care. They were more of the 'I believe in shooting the messenger, because it sends a message'. Captured former commandants of the Afghani secret police admitted that they were instructed to commit such atrocities that people were afraid of them before ever meeting them.

Rick glanced up at TC and could tell the big man had the same concerns.

If they were after Robin, why, and if they thought Thomas knew anything about him…

Rick let his head drop back onto TC's extended leg, focusing on the cave ceiling above him rather than what he remembered of the bodies they'd recovered from Taliban 'interviews' or Thomas's personality.

"He's not coming back any time soon, is he."

* * *

Thomas gasped at the shock of cold water to his face, sucking in a breath before he had chance to think about it. He sputtered and coughed and choked, reflexively throwing himself forwards.

Well, he would've.

If he wasn't tied to where he was sitting.

He tossed his head, shaking the water out of his face and his hair, blinking blearily against the dimness of the room as it swam slowly into focus.

It wasn't a room. Not really. Carved out of a rock wall, it still had a door and bare bulbs for lighting, claustrophobic and small, the air reeking of mildew and damp and something he didn't want to think about.

His head pounded in time with his heart, the dim light doing nothing for the spiking ache that went across the crown of his forehead. More than just water dripped into his eyes, stinging even as he attempted to blink it away.

He was far from alone. At least four – assuming he wasn't seeing double – unfriendly faces glowered back at him. The one directly in front of him still held the now empty bucket, a Kalashnikov hung with a three point harness across his chest. The other three were similarly armed, but their hands rested at the ready, palms flat against the stock of their guns with their fingers alongside the triggers.

Impulse made him want to ask about the others. Were they alive, were they dead, were they okay – but prudence kept him from asking. Let them think he cared more about himself than the others. Don't let them become pressure points. Instead, his opted for default mode.

Sarcasm.

"You know, proper gun handling says 'keep finger along the receiver until ready to fire'," Thomas slurred. "Don't want to accidentally shoot your buddy in the ass, do you?"

The three in the back frowned, glancing between each other, but the man in front, the one with the bucket, huffed a snort of laughter without humor, and with no other warning, swung the bucket with enough force that when it collided with Thomas's skull, he thought for sure he was going to pass out again. Stars burst across his darkening vision and he tasted blood and dirt across his tongue and was honestly surprised that when he spit out a glob of blood and torn skin, a tooth didn't go with it.

" _Kahāṅ hai sahāfī_?"

Thomas's brain pulled up blank. Not Dari or Pashto. Which wasn't all that unusual. Taliban had no unifying language, and anyone who came into the country to join their fight didn't always bother to learn a new language. It sounded familiar, and if he hadn't just been bashed in the head with a heavy object, he might've recognized it.

" _Kahāṅ hai sahāfī_?"

"I don't speak…whatever that is," he said. "I don't know what you're saying."

Two of the rear guards decided they didn't appreciate his tone, and as one threatened – at least, that's what Thomas was guessing, given the tone – the other raised his rifle, pointing it at Magnum's face. Language or not, the message was clear: we don't like your attitude.

Well, look at that. Something the Taliban and American military leadership had in common.

"If you didn't need me alive, I'd still be on that mountain." Thomas pulled bruised lips back in something closer to a snarl than a smile. "We both know you're not going to shoot me, so threatening to isn't gonna do fuck all."

It didn't matter if they understood the exact words. They knew he wasn't afraid of them like they wanted him to be. They didn't shoot him.

They _did_ , however, swing the gun stock around to slap him upside the head with it, and he felt his teeth slice into the side of his cheek as his head whipped to the side from impact.

The leader repeated the same question in the same vaguely familiar but unknown language.

" _Habla español?_ " he suggested, smirking through the blood pooling behind his teeth.

 _That_ threw them off.

The leader frowned. Clearly, he recognized English, even if he didn't speak it – or maybe he actually understood Magnum's sarcasm with the first answer, which earned the bucket to the face – but Spanish wasn't something he'd come across. Now the man was second guessing his intel.

Magnum gave a snort of derisive laughter, but almost choked again when he dislodged a glob of congealed blood from his nose.

" _Gato tiene su_ _lengüeta_?" The idiom lost something when translated, but the man got the general idea that it was unlikely Thomas was cooperating instead of mocking him.

In retrospect, he probably should've expected the blow, but he chalked it up to two serious head injuries. The kick caught him off guard. Even if he had his hands free, he wouldn't have caught himself before slamming the back of his head against the ground, his entire weight plus the chair falling on top of his bound hands.

He really hoped that _crunch_ was the chair breaking, and not all of his fingers.

It took a second to remember to breathe.

It took a couple more to remember how.

" _Kahāṅ hai sahāfī_!" the man was shouting now. He grabbed a fistful of Thomas's BDU shirt, yanking him up several inches off the ground. Thomas couldn't even hold his head upright, instead lolling backwards. " _Kahāṅ hai sahāfī_?!"

"English, mother fucker – do you speak it?" The breathy rasp wasn't quite as effective as Samuel L. Jackson's classic delivery, but it achieved _something_. The man dropped him back to the ground, standing over him with his feet on either side of Magnum's ribs as he dug into his vest pocket.

He reached down again, but instead of grabbing onto Magnum's shirt, he fisted his hand in his hair, wrenching Thomas's head back up to shove a worn piece of paper in his face. "" _Kahāṅ hai sahāfī_? _Cur yā? Kahāṅ hai cur yā_?!"

Magnum really wished he knew what the man was saying, because as his vision cleared, he finally saw what the man was holding. It was a black and white surveillance still photograph, he recognized the only two people in the picture immediately.

It was a photo of him…and Robin Masters.

Taken at a distance, it was the two of them talking. Robin had his glasses down around his neck and his helmet removed, but the journalist label clearly visible. Thomas almost had his back to the camera, but for whatever reason, he was looking over his shoulder at someone out of view of the camera making his face clearly visible. It was unmistakably him and Robin, no point in lying about it, but what the question was, he didn't know. The Taliban didn't capture people for intelligence or information – they knew enough about military tactics that by the time they had information they could confirm, it would be worthless. The odds of anyone besides someone wearing stars on both shoulders would have anything worth knowing was slim to none. Taliban captured foreigners for two things: ransom, or public denouncing of their home countries involvement with Afghanistan.

This was clearly neither.

"What about it?" he asked, wincing when the man's grip in his hair only tightened. "I'm not trying to be an ass – I don't know what you want me to say. _Na mey-danäm_. _Za na pohegam_!"

The man with the picture spit in disgust, but at least he released Thomas's hair, letting his head drop back to the rocky ground. It still hurt, but at least it wasn't like falling the distance from sitting upright to the ground.

The man muttered something incomprehensible, dragging his hand over his face as he scratched his beard with blunted nails. With little warning, he spun on his heel and kicked Magnum as hard as he could in the side.

There was an audible crack that even _he_ could hear over the sudden roar in his ears. Thomas didn't even have the air the shout, his breath catching in his throat as he felt something _ignite_ as he reflexively tried to curl in on himself, but the ropes that bound his hands to the chair held fast as he choked on air like a fish out of water. Even if he wanted to answer, or knew what the hell he was asking, he couldn't.

The man was screaming at him now, enraged beyond reason, spittle flying from his lips as he hauled off and kicked Thomas again.

And again.

And _again_.

In his rage, his aim was off, and a kick meant for already broken ribs missed and caught Thomas on his chin, cracking his head against the ground in an explosion of white and the sudden absence of sound that whined in his ears like a shorted speaker.

The last thing he knew was he finally recognized the language – Urdu – and understood the question: _where is the journalist?_

* * *

Author's Note: Shorter than every other chapter, but this is a more typical length for me. The whole story so far in a word document is over 50 pages long and currently a little over half the length of a NANO novel, and it's nowhere near to complete. No worries about it being a 'short' story, or that all breaks will be this long (I am, however, dangerously behind on another fandom's exchange fic, so I might disappear for a bit). Anyway, as always, shout out to pandigirl19 and blazeofobscurity over on Tumblr for listening to me plot this out and give me helpful feedback at all hours of the day and night! Let me know what you think! Feel free to come find me on tumblr as disappearinginq!


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note: This chapter was harder than I thought, because I really don't like graphic violence. The human imagination is worse than reality, anyways. Many, many thanks to gaelicspirit, blazeofobscurity, and pandi16 for their help and listening to me rant and rail against this before I finally got the hang of it. The show has left a lot to be desired since I am not a fan of the fact it has become Mary Poppins, former MI6 and the Idiots Who Occasionally Contribute to the Story Line. ::twitch:: Oh well. That's why I have fanfic.

* * *

Time was a funny thing, his mother always told him. Never enough of it, and somehow, always too much on your hands. He'd never thought about it much. He'd never seen any reason to. Looking at a watch only made good times fly and the bad times drag.

It mattered less in the Pit.

And somehow, he kept hearing Rick's voice with his standard excuse – _time is a construct_ – every time he was late.

 _Time is a construct_.

It just popped into the forefront of his mind in the middle of an interrogation session, and there it stayed. He held onto the thought for what seemed like days. Months. _Years_. And he laughed to himself about the oddity of time. TC would have some interesting thoughts on it.

If he ever saw them again.

In person, anyway.

Because he imagined them every day. Saw them in his sleep. Talked to them when he was alone and in darkness too thick to even see his hand in front of his face.

And every time he was yanked from the Pit and into blinding light and flashes of color and bursts of raw agony and questions shouted at him that he no longer understood even if he wanted to answer, he heard Rick's voice – _time is a construct_ – and heard TC's snort and imagined Nuzo's eye roll.

 _Time is a construct._

He hadn't been here for weeks.

 _Time is a construct._

It was only minutes.

 _Time is a construct._

He could take anything for a few minutes.

 _Time is a construct._

Especially for his brothers.

It was only a few minutes.

A few very long, very lonely minutes.

He still didn't understand what they wanted with Robin. He wasn't even sure if Robin was alive to protect by refusing to answer, but damned if he cared.

Swelling reduced. Cuts scabbed. Bones mended. Burns healed.

So what if his pinkie would always be a little crooked? So what if he had a new scar? So what if it was always going to ache when it rained?

The information about a journalist from Hawaii was coming with him to his grave, no matter how many bones they broke.

A small mercy was that he was alone when they took him, and alone in the dark. He hadn't seen in the others since the mountain side. He knew they were alive – when he teetered on the edge of consciousness, darkness edging across his blurred vision, he would catch snippets of complaints about their other prisoners. Mostly about failure of their parent country refusing ransom, which could be anyone, but then he'd catch things like _the big one cracked one of the bars_ or _the Americans are being difficult and demanding something_. It wasn't proof positive that they were alive, but it was close enough.

Hope didn't require much.

His personal favorite though, had to be: _The American who speaks Russian – do you believe what he says_? Followed by hushed denials of _no, of course not_.

It hurt his aching ribs, but he chuckled anyway.

He'd always wondered about Rick's history. Thomas could only apologize but so much for being nosy, but after their first meeting going less than swimmingly, his curiosity got the better of him. The sharpshooter's record was a mile long, mostly with NJP's regarding disrespecting superior officers, failure to obey, and one oddly truncated entry that had Rick's signature swearing up and down he would never make a wager against a certain NCO involving cash or goats.

The complaints weren't a concern for Magnum. If anyone bothered to look at his own record, he doubted they'd still be surprised why he was still just a lieutenant.

It was the bizarrely devoid personnel file. Like Rick had just popped into existence at the age of 18 with a suitably dull background that wouldn't raise any eyebrows, beg any questions, or turn any heads. Nothing to explain why a kid born in Hawaii was one of the best marksmen the Marines had ever seen. Or why he spoke mostly-fluent Russian. Or how he knew hand to hand combat _before_ boot camp.

He _did_ wonder about why Rick had such a problem with authority figures. Not just the back talk that irked a lot of superior officers, but after only one day together, Magnum considered it more of a flat out paranoia. Before Rick knew Thomas was an officer, the older man (by a whopping total of three months) was personable and joking and _fun_ – and the second he realized Magnum was in fact _Lieutenant_ Magnum, just like that…Rick was gone, and Sergeant Wright took his place. Cold, aloof, disparaging, and accusatory, like Thomas was some sort of undercover NARC out to make sure he remembered he was a mere E5 in the shadow of holier than thou officer.

If Nuzo hadn't choked, near dying on his beer at the bar when Rick complained about Magnum's rank and pointed out that _no one_ hated Magnum more than anyone wearing bars or stars, he doubted Rick would've ever trusted him enough to be friends.

He wondered what Rick was telling them now.

He wondered how much of it was true.

He hoped they didn't worry about him. At least not as much as he worried about them.

The words of Louie Zamperini echoed on the heels of Rick's – _If I can take it, I can make it_.

Simple sentences to remember. Sometimes he said them aloud instead of his own name, rank and serial number, which seemed to confuse his interrogators enough to give pause, glancing between each other and wondering if he'd finally lost his mind.

Shortly after arriving in Afghanistan, Magnum and Nuzo were sent to talk to some of the locals – a peace keeping operation to garner goodwill towards the official Afghani forces and the American military over the Taliban – and one of the young men showed them his scars as a wordless explanation of why they didn't dare go against the Talib.

The Taliban, they torture you the worst in the beginning, the teen said, showing off thick, ropey scars from where he'd been beaten with a stave soaked in water – it'd cut through his skin like a knife through meat. After that, they do it for sport, not necessity.

Thomas currently regretted not asking the kid how long 'the beginning' was, because he wasn't sure how much of this he could take.

 _Time is a construct_ , he reminded himself every time he caught his thoughts wandering to how long it must have been since the crash. Or when hunger started to gnaw away at his gut, and his throat clicked every time he swallowed against the dryness. Or as the sharp agony of recent injuries faded to dull aches and scabs formed over wounds. _Time is a construct_.

But when the oppressive total darkness from the Pit pressed in from all sides, reeking of cold and damp and something rotted in the shadows that attracted the rats that bit through his clothes, and he wondered if he would ever see his friends again, he didn't care. He turned his face into the dirt and screamed until he could scream until he couldn't hear anything else.

Not the voices in his head, not the scratch of rodents in the dirt, not the questions of the Taliban about Robin, until they came to drag him away again, and it started over anew.

* * *

This time, they didn't drag him to the now familiar interrogation room. Magnum didn't even have his eyes open, keeping his head bent and his eyes shut against the blinding glare of the bare bulbs lining the naturally carved stone corridor of the cave. His bare feet dragged against the well worn and packed down dirt floor, too tired and petty to make an effort in keeping himself upright.

If they wanted to take him somewhere new, they were going to have to work for it, and he felt a pang of vindictive bitterness when they had to readjust their bruising grip on his arms more than once.

When the bitter cold wind hit him in the face, he couldn't help the sudden, sharp inhalation or urge to wrap his hands around his chest, the shock forcing his eyes open even as the dim gray light of a rainy sky blinded him after so many days (weeks?) underground and in the dark.

It took longer than it should have to realize he was outdoors. The air hurt his lungs, but he sucked it in greedily, even as it made his teeth ache and his chest burn and his nose run.

 _Fresh air_. Cold as hell and wet from the rain, but _fresh air_. Instead of damp and mildew, he smelled pine and sagebrush.

When his captors released his arms, he didn't even bother to put his hands out to catch himself, dropping to his knees in the damp sand and clay, forcing himself to remain upright even as he could feel himself sway dangerously in the wind.

Thomas looked up at his captors, squinting through his one good eye against the gray sky at the shadow looming over him.

"This is it then, huh? You couldn't have picked better weather?" He coughed, voice rough from days of not using it except to scream. "Sun would've made for a better lighting for an execution. Nice contrast for the camera."

He held no illusion to why they hauled him outside. ISIS was primarily known for public and recorded beheadings of enemy combatants or foreign aid workers and journalist, but they hardly cornered the market on it. He gathered what little moisture there was in his mouth and spat at the feet of the closest man.

"Get it over with," he growled. "I'm cold and I'm bored, might as well be dead, too."

The two men didn't move. Didn't speak. Didn't even acknowledge he'd said anything at all. They stood only a few feet away, their Russian military coats pulled high against their necks while they held their battered and dated Kalashnikovs across their chests. He was a little surprised they didn't even bother to hit him for his insolence. It wasn't like they'd tolerated sarcasm any other time. They just stood there, watching him.

Thomas wasn't entirely sure what the hold up was. This was…strange, even for the Taliban. He wracked his brain for something maybe one of the villagers mentioned about execution tactics, thinking he was missing something. But he didn't see a camera, or a cellphone. His quick, cursory glance around the opening of the cave revealed nothing – no jeeps for secondary transport, no boards to be nailed to (he shuddered at the memory of finding a crucified man in a recently won village), no extra men gathered around for a public stoning…which would've been stranger still, since that was typically for adulterers, not war prisoners.

Just the two men with their rifles, not even aimed at him.

Were they thinking he was going to try and run, and they could justify shooting him in the back? The Taliban never needed such an excuse. And where would he go, even if he _did_ run? He was barefoot. No coat, and no sleeves.

And Rick, Nuzo, and TC were still _somewhere_ in that cave.

If they expected him to run, he wondered if they knew it would only be right back where they'd dragged him out of.

Minutes dragged by.

Nobody spoke. Nobody else joined them.

The wind, barely noticeable before, started to pick up, swirling in eddies like an airborne tide in the small clearing of the cave and cutting through his too-thin and filthy shirt making him shudder.

The sky darkened. A storm was rolling in over the mountains.

It began to rain.

At first, it wasn't too bad. A bare smattering of droplets here and there, and Thomas hoped blindly that the storm would just miss them. His shivering awakened older injuries, reminding him that lack of shoes and his friends were far from the only reasons he couldn't run for it.

Spite made him want to not give in to instinct to try and warm himself or retain what little body heat he had. A kneejerk reaction, but a foolish one. He would fool no one pretending he wasn't cold, when shivers visibly wracked his whole frame. He rubbed his arms, hunching in on himself as much as broken ribs would allow, and after a few futile minutes, he made to stand, pushing himself up with one hand so he could move – limited as it would be – to try and force circulation back into his extremities and keep him warm.

A foot swept his arm before he could dodge, sending him back into the dirt face first with a snarled " _Zäno bezaned!_ " from one of the guards.

So he wasn't allowed to stand, he thought, pushing himself back to his knees and spitting out the mouthful of sand. That answered whether or not they expected him to run. But then what the hell _was_ their plan?

It started to pour.

The heavy rain pelted down like chips of ice, stinging his bare skin like angry hornets, soaking through his clothes in a matter of moments. His clothes plastered to him like a second freezing skin, turning the rocky clay beneath his knees into frigid mud.

The guards stepped back into the overhang of the cave opening, one lighting a cigarette while the other pulled the collar of the coat up to his ears against the chill.

Thomas bit his lip when he realized exactly what their plan was.

Death from exposure.

Long, slow, painful, and minimal effort from them, and no way to ward it off.

His teeth still chattered, bruising his bottom lip even as he tried to stop them. He was tempted to make a break for it just so he could die faster from a bullet to the back than the slow death they had planned, but when he moved to stand again, he didn't even need the guard to knock him back down. His arm gave way beneath him, his own weight forcing him back down into the dirt, collapsing onto his back.

What the hell was it Nuzo taught him back in Coronado about hypothermia? Shivering was a good thing, and when it stopped, that's when you knew you'd gone from cold to hypothermic. Memories of sitting, arm in arm with the other SEAL trainees in the Tijuana sloughs, neck deep in the bone chilling mud overnight. His class, once 130 strong were down to less than fifty, and with the promise from the instructors of a warm fire and the release of their classmates if only five quit, more were about to drop. One lone voice in the night had started to sing. Horribly out of tune, and barely recognizable, it didn't matter. Another voice joined in, and then another and another until the entire class was singing like drunken sailors on shore leave.

Not another man dropped from the class during the remain of Hell Week.

It's easy to hope when there's someone else beside you. When there was a team, or a friend, going through the same hell.

There was a reason why they operated as a team.

And Thomas had been alone for a _very_ long time.

He couldn't remember the song the one lone voice had started that night on the flats. The only thing that popped into his head was the song from a cartoon about the rain, so out of the blue he almost laughed out loud.

 _Drip drip drop little April shower, beating a tune as you fall all around_.

Time, the traitorous bastard, dragged on. Lost meaning. Seemed to slow and stop, as frozen in this moment as he was.

At least he would get to die under an open sky.

* * *

When door flung open, they all jumped. Even the other prisoners.

Food wasn't brought more than once a day, and today's meal was still digesting. Whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner, no one really knew. Without natural light, days and nights became meaningless, time bleeding from one hour to the next until Rick was sure he was going to lose his mind.

Best guess they had to go from was hoping their natural sleep cycle remained intact – night owl Rick compared to early risers TC and Nuzo. It was far from an exact science. According to TC, circadian rhythms could falter from external factors, such as daylight (which they had none) and temperature (which remained the same).

Until recently, their most accurate way of measuring the passage of time was the severe bruising on his back. TC had some rather…creative…ways of describing how the violent shades of black and purple slowly faded into sickly green and jaundiced yellow, and how the swelling gradually reduced to allow him to move his toes, and then his feet and legs without sucking in a breath between clenched teeth to keep from crying out.

As much as the others seemed to _want_ to track time, Rick purposely ignored them. Didn't make tally marks, didn't try and keep track of when food was brought, because as far as he was concerned, the days dragging by meant only one thing:

The odds of Thomas being alive dropped with every passing one.

Instead of watching the guards for time checks, Rick paid attention to what they carried. Some had rifles. Some had bayonets and swords. Some had only knives, and others seemed unarmed. Every one posed different problems and opportunities for escape – unarmed soldiers were easily taken out but left him with no weapon to take for himself, and the odds of being able to take out _two_ Taliban fighters without being noticed or killed without his own weapon were pretty grim. Trying to tackle someone with a weapon, well…fifty fifty chance that the weapon would be his by the end of the fight, but at least he would have something to shoot someone else with.

There was also the problem with the locked door.

TC smashed one of the cages pretty easily, reaching through the broken bars to grab the haji by keffiyeh and yank him face first into the bars, breaking a nose and chipping more than a few teeth.

After that, they were upgraded to metal. Which was actually pretty funny the first day, because they hadn't realized TC could still reach an arm through, and metal hurt a lot more than just splintered wood.

Now they came in pairs, one with a gun trained on TC, the other slid food through a crack beneath the door.

Rick's primary contribution while waiting for the swelling in his back to go down was throwing thinly veiled insults in Russian at the guards.

Thinly veiled. Graphically suggestive. Take your pick. The Russian seemed to throw them more than anything, but then, Afghanistan had long been an occupied territory for them. It was a tossup as to whether or not the individual guards thought of Mother Russia as an enemy or an ally, but they almost all understood at least a little of the language.

Enough to understand what Rick planned to do with their entrails if he was ever let out.

In fairness, what probably kept him alive had less to do with fear of him, but fear of TC. Something Nuzo pointed out on more than one occasion, comparing them to a junkyard dog and a yappy terrier.

They never heard word about Thomas. Whether he was dead or alive. If he was just left in a cage like they were, in another cave. If he was being tortured. He wasn't even used as a threat against them.

Anything would've been preferably to nothing.

At least, that's what he thought.

Between the two guards hung a limp and lifeless Thomas. His head was titled back, catching what little of the light the bare bulbs offered, his normally tan skin a sickly gray. One entire side of his face was bruised, from temple to beyond his jawline, swelling his eye shut, his other one closed. His hair was longer than the last time they'd seen him, just long enough he would've caught hell from Greene for being out of regs. He was soaked through, his clothes plastered to him revealing how much weight he'd lost in the time he'd been gone, and what little of Thomas's skin he could see was speckled with half healed cuts, bruises and…Rick swallowed tightly…burns.

He wasn't breathing.

* * *

And now you can blame gaelicspirit for that ending. As always, feel free to come find me on tumblr disappearinginq!


	6. Chapter 6

Author's Note: It's late. I should have more of a note than just 'I needed to post this before I screamed at it and set fire to the computer' but...it sums up my writing lately pretty well. As always, much thanks to blazeofobscurity and gaelicspirit for their feedback and unending patience with me as I screamed into the void about this chapter. Hypthermia treatment and recovery is largely bullshitted because I refused to delete things when it took me so long to get it on to paper in the first place.

* * *

" _Bar garded!_ " one of them snarled, hefting the muzzle of his rifle at the cage bars.

"Get back," Nuzo translated.

Rick's kneejerk reaction was to do the opposite, but Nuzo gave a quick, subtle shake of his head, signaling him to back off.

There wasn't a lot of room for them to move away from the door, shuffling on their knees since the ceiling was too low to stand, but the three of them shuffled back as far as they could go, hands held up in front of them to prove they weren't going to try anything.

Even if all Rick really wanted to do was rush the door, slam it into the guy's face and beat him to death before his body had a chance to hit the ground.

The guard scowled at TC, the rifle pointed directly at the big man's chest. " _Shomä rä akhtär mey-deham,"_ he snarled, flicking the safety to semi-auto.

"Pretty sure that was a warning just for you," Nuzo muttered. "Guess you got yourself a reputation."

TC hitched his hands a little higher.

The guard fumbled with the lock, taking agonizing seconds to do it one handed and Rick bit his lip to keep from offering to help because every second he wasted was another second Thomas didn't have.

He refused to believe it was too late. Because it couldn't be.

Not for Thomas.

Not for them.

 _You bleed, I bleed_.

This would be a fucking hemorrhage.

They threw a still and unmoving Magnum into the cage, his body collapsing in a boneless heap even as they slammed the door shut behind him, locking it back in place.

" _Kafir_ ," the guard cursed, spitting at the floor before turning and leaving with his friend. The outer cell door slammed shut with a final _clang_ , and before the echo faded, they were scrambling for Thomas.

"Is he breathing?" Rick demanded, rolling Thomas onto his back and putting an ear to his chest. "Got a pulse – slow, but it's there. Nuz?"

The chief held his hand over Thomas's mouth and nose for a brief second. "We got a live one."

"He's _freezing_ ," Rick commented, trying to remember what the first aid was for hypothermia. "What the hell did they do, dunk him in ice water?"

TC shook his head. "Nah, man, he's still shivering, it's just…really low. This is stage two hypothermia – prolonged exposure to the cold and wet. We can do this."

"So?" Rick prompted. _Now what_?

"Gotta get him warm and dry," TC said. "Get him out of his clothes."

"And replace them with _what_ ," Rick snarled. "Good thoughts? We don't have anything to spare, they took the rest of our uniforms, and this ain't exactly the Hilton where you can just request more blankets!"

TC ignored him, glancing around the small cage. "No. But we got neighbors."

In the weeks they'd been stuck in their tiny cells, they'd managed to at least learn a little about their fellow prisoners. Most were foreign aid workers caught helping the victims of the Taliban. Some were journalists that the Taliban captured for ransom money, or to denounce their home country's involvement with the Middle East.

Nobody else was a soldier, American or otherwise.

They didn't share the same spoken language, but they could generally get a point across from one to another, and while they weren't _friends_ , it was hard not to bond over shared suffering. The language barrier had a little overlap – most European prisoners had English as a second language or could guess with the similarities between romance languages. If one didn't know what the other was saying, someone else generally did and passed the message along. Many of them held hope that now, with American soldiers here, they would be found and taken home. Americans always came for their own.

It was a dull and faded hope, but not quite dead yet.

Rick looked back at the other cages, filled with more human misery. "Anything you have to spare, give it here!"

One of the journalists, a Frenchman who never gave his name that Rick was aware of pulled off his outer shirt, shoving it through the bars to the man in the cage next to him, urging him to pass it along. Another man on the other side of the fire pit pulled off his trousers, revealing long johns underneath. He wadded the pants up into a ball and tossed it as far as he could across the open floor where TC could just reach it if he stretched.

"Here," Nuzo said, trying to wrestle Thomas's dead weight upright enough to pull his shirt up over his head. "Keep him upright. TC, give me the shirt."

The pilot handed it over without question, helping Nuzo fish Magnum's arms through the sleeves while Rick tried to keep him sitting up. The pants were slightly more difficult, but that was because they were too big, catching on everything and anything.

Nuzo laughed abruptly, shaking his head even as the other two stared at him like he'd lost his damn mind. "Jesus. It's like trying to wrestle Jake into his pajamas."

"At least Jake is small enough you can just pick him up," TC quipped, forcing levity into the dangerous situation – no medical supplies meant they were severely limited what they could do for hypothermia this severe.

"See if you can wake him," the Australian in the next cell said. "You don't want him to slide into a coma."

"Trying," Rick ground out. "Anyone got anything close to a blanket? Towel? More loose clothing?"

There was chatter amongst the prisoners as Nuzo cradled Thomas's head, probing at one of the nastier gashes on the side of his head. "Good news and bad – I think he's literally out cold from the head injury, not the hypothermia. If he's only _just_ stopped shivering, we might only be in the moderate range instead of severe, which means active external rewarming. Try to get his circulation going. TC – grab him. Hold him close for body heat, 'cause we ain't got nothing else."

Rick tried not to think about how this could be for nothing. Or how Thomas already looked dead and was colder than a corpse had any right to be, but tried to remind himself none of them looked particularly hale or hearty at the moment and _they were still alive_. Anything was possible while they were still alive.

And so help him, if he had to beat the Grim Reaper with his own goddamn scythe to keep him at bay, he _would_.

Miracles of miracles, someone had a blanket – rough, filthy and filled with holes. Rag might've been a more accurate description, but it didn't matter. It was dry and most importantly, warm. And all they had.

"First aid was a while ago – aren't we supposed to be trying to rub circulation back?" TC asked.

Nuzo shook his head. "That can stress the heart and lungs. Ideally, we would have things lot hot water bottles and warm, sweet drinks but…" he didn't finish the sentence. "This is what we got, and we've made do with worse. Thomas will be fine."

Thomas, still unconscious and looking like Death warmed over – chilled over? – wrapped in a flimsy blanket, clothes that didn't fit and hugged against TC's broad chest, didn't help convince Rick.

"Now what?" he asked, desperate for something, _anything_ else he could do.

Nuzo sighed, sitting back on his heels and rubbing a tired hand over his face, smearing the grime across his cheeks and nose. "Nothing else for us to do but wait. Thomas's turn now."

* * *

Rick lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the cage. If one didn't know him, he would be the picture of relaxed – his head pillowed on one arm, legs crossed, tossing a rock to himself as he hummed 80's ballads under his breath.

But TC and Nuzo _did_ know him. Could see the tension in his shoulders, the precise, aggressive flick of his wrist as he tossed the rock up in the air only to snatch it with all the grace of a hawk honing in on dinner, the way his free hand clenched in a fist tight enough they could see the tendons standing out against his forearm.

Waiting was usually Rick's strong point. Had to be, as a sniper. Long hours in the heat and the cold, unmoving and just waiting for the moment to act. But he wasn't waiting on one of his best friends to wake up and say something more cohesive than delirious mutterings in a mishmash of languages that no one understood.

Nuzo said it was a good sign he was warming up and eventually would wake up and actually be coherent enough to recognize them, but Rick wasn't sold.

This was almost worse than not knowing where Thomas was, or what was happening to him. Because now they knew, and the result was the same: they could do nothing but sit and wait for him to return.

"You know, if I ever come across my recruiter, I'm kicking him so hard in the balls, his grandchildren are gonna feel it," he grumbled.

"Yeah?" TC said. He was too tall to lay down in the cramped cage – instead he dozed propped against the corner with Nuzo on the other side of the bars and Thomas sandwiched in between them, buried under layers of borrowed and stolen gear to share body heat.

"'Join the Marines', he said," Rick drawled. "'See the _world_ ,' he said." He paused with his rock in his fist, cocking his head to the side. "Now here I am, stuck in a dog kennel underground, smelling of death and finding out rickets is apparently still a thing in the modern world, wondering if I still have a tan, or it's just layers of dirt permanently rubbed into my skin."

"Pretty sure this was in the recruiting pamphlet," TC pointed out, not cracking an eye.

"I _know_ it was in the Navy's," Nuzo piped in.

"I should have stayed in organized crime," Rick complained. He tossed the rock up a few more times. "At least I would've been in some place warm. Some place tropical. Lots of scantily clad women."

He heard someone cough to his right and craned his neck to peer over at the adjoining cage. The man was trying to cover up a laugh and failing miserably – Rick was pretty sure he was a French journalist currently awaiting ransom from his government.

"Yeah, that's right. _Lots_ of women. A yard of fabric between them. And oh, the beach. God, remember the _beach_?" Rick let his head fall back. "Warm sand, warm surf, cold beers between friends…I'd even take a hungry shark at this point. Least the sharks have the decency to only bite you once when they realize you taste like garbage."

TC chuckled. "You know damn well black people don't swim."

"Who says swimming needs to be involved? You can actually sit out in daylight for more than eight seconds without burning to a crisp. Sun bathe. Attract all the honeys with that strong, silent shit you got going on. I'd have a club, I could run up my own tab…." Rick stretched his hands out through the bars, the only way he was able to stretch out completely flat. "Oh yeah. Shoulda been a mob boss."

"You weren't _really_ in crime, were you?" Nuzo asked, poking his head around TC's shoulder. "They would've never let you in."

Rick popped back up, grinning broadly. "Hell, yeah, I was. My uncle ran the crime scene over the entirety of the Big Island. Spent every summer with him for like 10 years, and then when mom and pop's got divorced, I went to stay with him for the rest of high school. And we _all_ know military intelligence is an oxymoron. Besides. After they took a look at my range scores, they were tripping over themselves to get me to sign on that dotted line."

"So, how'd you wind up in the Marines, Capone?" Nuzo challenged.

Rick smirked, dropping his head back. "My uncle made me join. Wanna know the hilarious logic behind it? Come on, ask me. You'll laugh. It's _great._ "

TC and Nuzo shared a look.

"What's that?"

"He told me it was to keep me out of trouble."

Nuzo busted out laughing, but TC managed to smother it, only smirking and shaking his head.

"Oh, you think I'm joking? When I get out of here, I'm going to rub this in his smug face." Rick abruptly pitched his voice three octaves lower. " _Join the Marines, boy. They'll keep you out of trouble. They'll keep you on the straight and narrow. Structure will do you good, son_." And then further in his normal voice, "Oh yeah. I mean, he's technically not wrong – not a whole lot I can manage here. In a cage that's five by eight. No yard time. I don't think I'm going to be able to go to a pet store after this without freeing every goddam cockapoo or shitpoo that's in there."

"What the fuck is a _shitpoo_?" TC demanded.

"Those yappy little designer mutts that are a cross between a Shih tzu and a poodle," Rick explained, waving his hand dismissively. "Stay out of trouble my ass. When I get out of here –"

"What makes you think you're going to escape?"

Rick shot a dirty look at the reporter. "Spite. Rage and spite. I'm not gonna die here because I'm too pissed off. And even if I _do_ wind up dead, I'm not following some bright light. I'm staying here to fucking haunt their asses. I'd be a regular goddamn poltergeist. We're talking full monty – possession, throwing shit, starting fires, whispering shit in their ears when they try to take a piss…I'd be that asshole that would wait until they were standing next to each other, too. Because that is my level of petty."

The man laughed darkly. "If you were going to escape, why haven't you done it yet?"

Rick turned away again, returning to flip the rock into the air, pointedly ignoring the man. "Maybe we're just waiting for an opportune moment."

Magnum fidgeted under his blanket, twisting suddenly in his sleep, tucking his head until his chin almost touched his chest, his unpinned arm coming up to cover his head as his knees pulled up, caught in the middle of a nightmare.

" _No sè nada,"_ he protested, slurred. " _No conozco nadie_."

"Easy, brother," TC soothed, dropping his large hand onto Magnum's hunched shoulder like he had a dozen times in the last few hours. Instead of stilling beneath the comforting hand, Magnum exploded into motion – launching himself backwards and out from underneath TC's grip with such force he knocked Nuzo into the wall, momentarily stunning the older SEAL as he stumbled to his knees faster than one would've thought possible even for a SEAL, about to lurch to his feet in the too short cell when Rick reach up and grabbed for the hem of his shirt, yanking him back down before he could bash his head on the top bars and knock himself back out.

Magnum hit the dirt, hard and off balance on only one knee, reeling backwards until his back hit the cave wall, one arm out for balance as he grabbed wildly, nail-less fingers tangling in the loose fabric of Rick's shirt as he brought up his other arm, prepared to strike at his perceived attacker.

"Hey, _hey,_ same side, Thomas!" Rick protested, holding his free hand up, palm out in a gesture of surrender.

Thomas looked…well, like Not-Thomas. The lieutenant always had the air of someone who was more suited for board shorts and beaches than camouflage and combat zones, smiling even after narrowly avoiding getting killed, literally rolling with punches and managing to laugh good-naturedly in the face of death.

This was _not_ Thomas.

This was something sharp edged with teeth and claws to match, his dark eyes almost black in the dim cave light and hollowed out from dark bruising.

This was something wild and wary.

"Tommy, focus – _look_ at me," Rick ordered, even as Thomas's gaze roved restlessly over the small cage. He snapped his fingers and was rewarded with Thomas's attention. Even if Thomas still didn't seem to recognize him. "Feel this?" he pushed lightly against Thomas's chest, rocking the younger man back slightly. "Yeah? We're real. We're here. How 'bout you?"

Thomas blinked owlishly, and Rick could see the gears start to turn – he wasn't even sure if he could classify Thomas as actually being _awake_ yet, but it was better than the fight or flight from seconds early.

Thomas's grip tightened on Rick's shirt.

"Rick?"

It lacked the confidence of a truly coherent mind, but it was the first time Thomas recognized anyone since being returned.

"Yeah, buddy. Me. Us. _All_ of us." Rick offered a shadow of his normal smirk, even if it felt alien and wrong in this hellhole.

Rick flinched when Thomas yanked him forwards, half expecting to get punched anyway, and instead found himself in a bone crushing hug.

"You're _alive_ ," Thomas breathed, even if it sounded more like a croak, and Rick could feel the younger man practically wilt as the tension leached from his shoulders, his bruised and ragged fingers fisting into the fabric of Rick's shirt. "And you're…okay?"

Rick coughed pointedly. "Not if you don't ease up, Tommy. Man's gotta breathe, you know?"

Thomas let up fractionally but didn't let go, and secretly, Rick was kinda glad. He knew what the man meant. Days and weeks with no proof of life on either side and judging from the condition Thomas was returned to them in, he wasn't just left alone to his own devices in another cell in a different part of the cave. Hope was one thing. A dangerous, beautiful thing. But as time went on, it started to flicker and die a little more with every passing mealtime that Thomas was still gone.

It couldn't have been any easier on Thomas's end. The last time they'd seen each other was on the side of the mountain. Rick hadn't even been able to walk, the adrenaline from near death and a miraculous survival of a chopper crash was still coursing high, and the last thing Thomas probably would've heard was the gunshot that killed...

Oh _shit_.

Rick's grip tightened against Thomas, ignoring the fact that he could feel the unnatural protrusion of his shoulders and spine. Here they were, wondering if Thomas was still alive because they hadn't seen him. At least they had each other and a relatively solid knowledge that Thomas's death wouldn't have been a quiet affair. Meanwhile, Thomas's last memory of them was a gunshot in the mountains, and weeks alone with only his own thoughts – and Rick knew how _he_ would've fared. "We're fine," he promised. "All of us are okay. Just worried about you. Look. You even made the last of Nuzo's hair fall out."

Thomas choked more than laughed. "That was Paulie." It took a moment for Rick to understand the good-natured jab, muffled as it was against his shirt. "It was like that when I met him."

Rick snickered when he caught Nuzo's glare. The older man was rubbing the back of his head where it'd collided with the cave wall but seemed otherwise uninjured. He just looked relieved that Thomas was coherent.

"Rick?"

"Yeah, buddy?"

" _Creo que me voy a desmayar ahora_."

Rick spoke maybe twelve words in Spanish – seven of which were swears Thomas taught him while they were waiting in medical after a badly executed RECON – but he enough time to process 'I think' and 'now' before Thomas slumped sideways, dead weight in his grip.

* * *

Author's Note: This isn't actually where I planned on ending it, buuuut...I am very much a 'thrive on response' writer, and it's been ages since I'm updated this fic despite working on it for months. Blame the new job, and the fact that I decided to write about hypothermia, of which I have only a passing knowledge.

Ahem. Anyways. Read and, if so inclined, leave a review or come find me on Tumblr disappearinginq!


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: Honest to God, I forgot what chapter this was on. And then I had a minor coronary thinking I had misplaced at least one chapter, but alas, no. Just terrible record keeping skills. Sorry for the delay on this one - it's largely expository, and I think it's going to be the last one told in "line". I don't actually like graphic descriptions of torture as it's happening, so much of the remainder is going to be either glossed over (I would recommend reading Chapters 10/11 of Running Up That Hill if you want to know what I mean). Anyway - much thanks to blazeofobscurity, who listens to me bitch and moan about poor life choices and gaelicspirit who forever puts me in awe with her stories and all her help with this. All mistakes are mine.

* * *

"I can't believe you passed out like a girl," Rick grumbled, handing off the meager share of his food. "You damn near gave us a heart attack."

He ignored the way that Thomas inhaled the bread, hardly pausing to chew. Just like he tried not to stare at the few missing fingernails, partially regrown over raw nerve beds, the awkward bend of his left pinky finger from improperly healed bones, or the varying shades of bruising that ranged from dark, almost black to faded jaundiced yellow.

And those were only the visible injuries.

The first night came and went with no further decline on Magnum's part. Nuzo warned them that they had to keep an eye on him in case his temperature dropped back down again over the next few days before his body remembered how to maintain the status quo for core temperatures, though it could take longer without the proper treatment and foods necessary to bring his glucose back up.

True to form, however, Thomas acted like it was no big deal, even as he huddled between Nuzo and TC like an injured bird someone fished out of a gutter while he continued to shiver on and off.

Their captors did however prove Thomas's theory that they didn't want him dead, because instead of water, their meals had tea. Strong, sugary black tea that was sweet enough a hummingbird might develop diabetes from it. At first, Thomas protested all three of them giving him their share - that wasn't fair, he said, he would be fine eventually and they all needed to keep their strength up and going twenty four hours without hydrating would be bad for anyone.

Nuzo had fixed him with his unblinking Dad stare and shoved the primitive cup at his friend. "We didn't spend a night in the freezing rain, you numb-nut. Could you possibly dredge up slightly more concern for your survival than the _Taliban_ is currently showing?"

Begrudgingly, Thomas accepted the cup, making a point to glare over the wooden rim at the chief. At least, until he got his first taste of the hot tea and would've chugged it in one scalding gulp if TC hadn't reached over and tilted it back.

"Small sips. It has to last, and you're going to burn your mouth."

The small, desperate whine that escaped Thomas's lips at the sudden absence of the tea, the way he reflexively reached for it even as TC held it out of his reach and the raw _want_ in those dark, expressive eyes of his made Rick want to rip the cup out of TC's hands and give it back and tear TC a new one for being so callous.

But he knew TC was right.

He shifted so his hands were safely underneath his arms to resist the almost overpowering urge. Just to be safe.

The first few days were spent in relative silence. Thomas was hardly awake enough to notice, and the others were too relieved to have their friend back - if not healthy, at least whole - to try and come up with white noise conversation filler.

They took turns keeping one eye on Thomas and another on the door, no one managing a decent sleep except the lieutenant in his bone-deep exhaustion.

That was Nuzo's theory on why he'd passed out again so soon after waking - between lack of sleep, the intense shivering in the freezing cold, and just the sheer relief of finally being back with his teammates and assured that yes, they were all alive and together again caused an all systems failure for Thomas…like an adrenaline crash.

"You gotta figure what being that tense for that long is gonna do to a person," Nuzo pointed out. "And then to suddenly not have it…well." He'd gestured to the unconscious Magnum. "Happens to the best of us."

"Is he still in danger?" TC asked. "We covered cold weather rescue for like...two days and a PowerPoint, and I can't say I remember much of it beyond it's bad."

"As long as we keep him warm and dry, he should be okay. Besides. It's Thomas. You really think a little cold water is gonna be what does in Magnum? We saw him get thrown from a crashing helicopter and he was the least injured out of all of us. I don't know who that kid made a deal with, but whoever it was seems to be holding up their end of the bargain."

Rick tried not to think about the disaster that was his first mission as Thomas's Overwatch. He hadn't had much in the way of experience with SEALs, not firsthand. Marines and Navy rarely overreached during missions and centuries long tradition of hating each other kept most at arms length from each other, even back on base. Rick had plenty of experience keeping people away from him even before the Marines, but Thomas didn't seem to take the hint.

It hadn't helped that Nuzo and TC hit it off almost instantly, and TC was less opposed to being friends with the walking ray of sunshine that was Thomas Magnum, which just made Rick all the more determined to hate the guy.

It wasn't until after their haywire mission that'd gone to Hell six ways from Sunday that Rick finally understood Thomas Sullivan Magnum. That his relaxed and affable nature wasn't an act, and that he would bend over backwards to help anyone - _anyone_ \- regardless of whether or not he was _supposed_ to. That he never bothered with anyone's past, and never offered his own, because as far as he was concerned, here and now was all that mattered. That for seeming generally oblivious, the younger man missed nothing.

And for all that easy going 'rain is just another kind of good weather' attitude, it hid a seriously terrifying alter ego.

Rick had to admire the way that Thomas blatantly ignored every higher ups' specific orders to do as he was told with a lofty dismissal of 'I have selective hearing, you know that' and a bold faced lie to never do it again that no one ever believed.

Thomas changed back into his uniform as soon as it was dry enough to wear, returning the borrowed clothes to their original owners with a thankful smile. The warmth of the fire in the middle of the ring of cages did a fair job drying out the quick wicking material, even though Thomas protested that now he smelled like a burnt marshmallow thanks to the smoke.

Nuzo pointed out a burnt marshmallow was better than wet dog, and Thomas was hard pressed to disagree, and in true Thomas fashion, smirked through tattered lips and pointed out that he was the only one who'd had a bath in recent times, so score one for him.

"It was an emotional moment for me," Thomas snarked around the mouthful of bread. "And who knew hypothermia was so exhausting?"

His voice rasped and clicked from lack of use. At least, that was what Rick told himself, even if he knew it was a lie.

"I did," Nuzo interjected, holding up a finger. "And if your brain hadn't been scrambled from what I can only guess is one of many concussions, you would've remembered too."

Thomas waved a hand dismissively, hissing slightly when he moved too sharply, though he didn't seem to notice. "Doubt it. This is why I have you…for the important things."

Rick noticed the wince. And he could tell the others did too, but they said nothing. Thomas hardly needed the reminder of his newest scars.

It wasn't like they could do anything about his injuries, anyway. And if Rick had learned one thing over the years with Thomas, the only ones allowed to fuss were Mama Magnum and Lara Nuzo.

"They weren't going to kill me." Thomas brushed off their concerns with an aborted shoulder shrug. "Not yet, anyway."

The other three shared a look. Magnum's method of gathering intel was effective, if not brutal and self-destructive and the cause of premature graying in his friends.

Rick always wondered exactly what'd happened in Thomas's past that made him a SEAL team of one - plus oversight in the form of Nuzo, his former Coronado instructor. It was hard to imagine the slight lieutenant with an easy smile and empathy for days as one of the stone-faced and eerily Terminator-esque members of the elite Teams, and when Rick first met him, he'd already been alone. Nuzo hadn't offered any intel, one way or another, and TC was just as much in the dark as Rick.

There were things they could guess at, though, and bored military personnel were a rampant rumor mill. It couldn't have been something Thomas did, because despite being a resident problem child and thorn in the side of everyone who thought their rank was their identity, he was given free reign on pretty much everything. No one batted an eye when Thomas took a liking to two Marines - one of which was perpetually on the outs with _everyone_ \- and MacGyvered his own team out of spare pieces and broken parts. No one questioned why the CIA used him almost exclusively for missions better suited to their own agents than military members, or how a journalist became attached to him somewhere in Iraq and then never left.

"You got something for us?"

Thomas glanced past TC's shoulder to the other cages, weighing the consequences of being overheard to keeping his friends in the dark. "TC?"

The pilot shook his head. "The last thing any of them are is sympathetic to the Taliban."

Thomas worked his jaw for a moment, still debating. But TC's people assessment was rarely ever wrong. Thomas always saw the best in others, while Rick always saw the worst, and Nuzo was too busy trying to keep them all from getting sent to the brig that he always erred on the side of caution. TC, on the other hand, saw what was - unbiased, and without judgment.

"They're after Robin," Thomas finally admitted.

"You get any idea why, or are all these bruises just for show?" Nuzo asked.

Thomas didn't speak right away, and Rick could see the gears turning a mile a minute behind those dark eyes.

Thomas might be the master of 'winging it', but he was smarter than he usually let on. Obscure intelligence gathering was his specialty for a reason. Where others just saw dots on a map, Thomas saw Seurat - the intricacies of the pattern and how the dots came together for the big picture, and the freakish accuracy he could predict when and where they were going to find their next target even before consulting with Hannah.

"There's no reason they would want one specific journalist. Robin's a decent writer, but he's not exactly Anderson Cooper. He's not a household name that would bring more publicity to their cause. And if they have us for ransom, it wouldn't matter if they had Robin anyway. We're worth more, bargaining wise. Four of us, one of him…" Thomas trailed off, absently picking at one of the scabs on his hand even as Nuzo reached a hand out to stop him. He hardly seemed to notice. "The only reason they would need someone specific is if they needed _specific_ intelligence. And they shot Robin in the back, so they clearly don't need him alive - they _want_ him dead. Which means Robin went and fucking stuck his nose somewhere he shouldn't have."

Rick pointed out, "He does have a tendency to wander off with the villagers. And he's not always with us when we leave the FOB."

"Didn't he take a few rides with Wert and Academi?" TC asked.

Thomas nodded, his gaze a thousand miles away. Like a duck on a pond, Lara used to say. Calm on the surface, but just beneath that…

"What are the odds that us being captured and them trying to kill Robin are two totally separate incidents?" said Rick. "Because I gotta say, getting shot out of the sky was kind of a miracle survival."

"Surviving was likely an accident. They took a chance at which helicopter Robin was in. They had enough people on the ground no one was going to escape, but I think once they realized Masters wasn't with us, that's why we weren't shot on the mountain. They want to know where Robin is, which means they don't know. They either didn't see where Charlie went, or whatever intel network they use doesn't know where he was taken."

"Do they even know he was shot?" Rick asked.

Again, Thomas shrugged. "Maybe? In which case, they may not know that with severe injuries _and_ as a civilian, he would've been stabilized at a field hospital and then flown to Germany. Wherever he is, he isn't here."

The group was quiet for a long moment, considering the information.

Rick broke the silence. "Not to be a Debbie Downer, but if they want Robin and we don't have him…what does that mean for us?"

Thomas didn't look him in the eye as he leaned back, and carefully ignored the question. "They knew where we would be. They knew _when._ They knew the most likely exits, and they knew _everything_. It was a last minute decision by Greene for us to even go. Robin wasn't even scheduled to go until Greene assigned us."

Nuzo cursed in Italian.

"You don't think Greene…" Rick didn't want to finish the question. "I mean, I know we're not his favorite people, but I feel like this is a little extreme for teaching us a lesson."

TC shook his head. "He might not like us, but the last thing he is is a traitor."

"Besides, think about who _Masters_ might've pissed off, not just us. Who do you know that has their sticky fingers in a bunch of honey pots?" Nuzo pointed out. "It's not entirely a joke that Academi and Wert know more about our movements than we do. The CIA is another. Not everyone is Hannah, and it wouldn't be the first time they went and did something with a local warlord without telling anyone."

"Do you know anything else that he was working on?" TC asked Thomas.

Again, Thomas shook his head. "Not really. He's working on a book, and that's about all I know, except given what he's normally asking me about is past missions of ours, and nothing to do with the current country we're in."

Something abruptly occurred to Rick. "Uh, Thomas? Did you and Rob ever discuss your theory on all those attacks being by one guy?"

Thomas looked at him, slightly bewildered, as if he'd completely forgotten the side intelligence that consumed him day and night for the last six months - which, to be fair, he still wasn't completely with it after weeks of solitude and torture - and in slow motion, Rick watched as realization hit like a freight train. What little color in his cheeks he'd gotten back drained so fast Rick was a little surprised he didn't pass out again.

Thomas swore. _Violently_. He moved to stand but just as quickly Nuzo caught him by the back of his shirt before he could hit his head on the low ceiling he was always forgetting about. "Robin was with us every fucking mission Jahangir took responsibility for. Every _single_ one of them - where the hell was he when we stopped for Soraya? Did you see where he went? Who he was talking to?"

Shit. That seemed like a lifetime ago. "No. I was too busy saving your ass to keep an eye on anything else."

TC made a non-committal noise in the back of his throat. "When I found him, he was way back on the street, closer to Academi's Suburbans, but he was alone. Didn't say what he was up to, or what he was taking pictures of, but whatever it was, he sat looking through them for the rest of the ride back to base."

"Breathe, Thomas," Nuzo chided lightly. He didn't release the hold he had on the back of Magnum's shirt.

"No, no, just listen - _think_ for a second," Thomas snapped. "What the hell would anyone want with a random journalist, except if that journalist happened to have the _only proof a ghost was real?_ Maybe Jahingir wasn't at _every_ attack, but maybe he's just like any other psychopath - likes to come and watch the damage if he thinks it's going to be big enough. Or, even if Jahingir wasn't there _himself,_ then maybe Robin managed to find a link between the attacks. Something or some _one_ in the crowd, a familiar face or…" he stopped abruptly.

"Or?" TC prompted.

"They showed me a photograph of me and Robin. I have no idea when it was taken, but if I had to guess, it wasn't from too far away. It wasn't heavily pixelated like something small blown up, so it was probably a normal telephoto like Robin carries around - maybe 50 yards, max."

Nuzo sucked in a breath, and TC's lips pressed together in a thin, bloodless line.

"You mean it was someone who was near enough you could see them, but you didn't notice them," Rick said. "Which means…"

" _We_ have seen them before," Thomas snarled. "We had a fucking spy right next to us, and didn't notice a _goddamned_ thing."

"Well, maybe, but Thomas…think about what that means for you. You go everywhere with Robin. Well, _almost_ everywhere. Anyone who could be that close, who would know enough about our missions that they would know where we were going, even last minute…"

Thomas didn't even hear him, as he grabbed whole fistfuls of hair, suddenly doubling over on himself as if to make himself as small as possible. "I'm sorry," Thomas blurted out. " _Shit_ , guys, I am _so fucking sorry_ about this, we're here because of _me_ , if I'd paid closer attention, if I hadn't been so fucking distracted then maybe-"

"Hey!" Rick kicked Magnum's leg - not hard, but forceful enough that he managed to stop the self-recriminating panic before it could really get going. "That's _not_ what I meant! This isn't on you, _you_ didn't put us here. And don't you _ever_ let me hear you trying to convince us otherwise, _capisce?_ "

"But -"

"I don't think you're thinking this quite all the way through, brother," TC said quietly. "What Rick is trying to point out to you is…what's going to happen to _you_ if they figure out _you_ were the one who figured out Jahingir is real?"


	8. Chapter 8

I AM GOING ON VACATION. So, I decided that I should update before I leave so I can just enjoy myself as I pretend to be the only person on the planet in the middle of the woods for the next five days. This is likely how the descriptions are going to be from here on out - skipping over parts instead of play by play, with a few scene exceptions. We'll see. Many thanks to gaelicspirit again for being a sounding board and telling me when things don't make sense (I think I fixed them). Anyway. ONWARDS.

* * *

Time flies when you're having fun.

Or, in a Taliban prison camp.

Time blurred. Days became weeks. Weeks became months.

Or so they guessed.

No sunlight. No clocks. Temperature ambient and unchanging. The closest thing they had to guessing was just how much their scruff had grown. At least, until the Taliban caught on.

Rick had no idea a haircut could be what one would call 'traumatic' until he was on the receiving end of one, his face forced under the stale and filthy water of a bucket he refused to think about the original purpose of, his hands zip tied behind his back and a boot on his neck, holding him under. The rough hands that fisted in his too long hair, yanking at it while they used one of their own knives to hack at it.

The first time it happened, Rick was convinced he was about to be scalped, or at the very least, get a Columbian necktie.

The second time wasn't any better, because he knew enough about the Taliban to know that one of their favorite tactics was to 'practice' executions until their victims were so dulled by the repeated exposure to the blinding panic of _OhgodohGod, this is it, this is how I die_ , that they just stopped resisting. And that was when the machete came down for real.

When they wrenched his head down until his chin touched his chest, and as soon as the blade of the knife skimmed the surface of his skin, he was shoving backwards as hard and as fast as he could, bare feet scrabbling against loose stone and dirt until he slammed them both into the wall, hard enough to knock the wind out of the other man so that he dropped the knife at Rick's feet.

There was a heart stopping moment when all Rick could do was stare blankly at the weapon, partially registering 'oh hey, that's _my_ knife' and yet somehow frozen to the spot, his feet unwilling to move. Because diving for the knife with three other guards in the room, with his hands tied behind his back and half blinded by the water in his eyes and the dim lighting overhead wasn't an escape plan.

It was suicide.

And a part of Rick hadn't quite relinquished its death grip on the will to live.

Not yet.

He didn't reach for it. But _God_ , he wanted to.

That didn't seem to matter to them, because they kicked the shit out of him anyway, and it was a solid three days before Rick could finally open both eyes again, and another four before he could see more than shapes and shadows. He lost a tooth.

As much as it hurt to try and chew around the empty socket of raw nerves where one of his molars used to be, Rick would tell himself over and over again that it was worth it. That it wasn't the worst thing they could do to him. He had 32 teeth, he told the others. What was one less? If he could survive South Side Chicago for twenty years, he could survive this, no problem. Really, that tooth had been a little loose anyway. He owed the Taliban a favor - they weren't any less gentle about it than Marine Dental.

Because if he told himself he was fine, he was okay, he could _take it_ , then he could make himself believe they all could.

It was the mantra he told himself over and over, every time Thomas was gone.

 _We can make it._

When Thomas was first taken from them, they tried their damnedest to make sure it didn't happen. The Articles in the Code of Conduct said nothing about having to let the enemy take your friend without protest.

Amidst the shouting and the threatening, Rick's grip white knuckled on Thomas's arm even as he braced his feet against the cell door, refusing to let him go, Thomas grabbed Rick by the back of the neck, bringing their heads together so close so fast that Rick almost bounced off of him.

And he pleaded for Rick to let go.

"Rick - I am asking you, I am _begging_ you, let me go. Let me do this. This is my job. My job is to protect you. _All_ of you. And I can take this. I can _take_ this. But I _can't_ take it if it was _you_. I'll come back. I'll be right back, okay? _Just wait for me_."

Rick was so stunned that Thomas could be that stupid, he almost let go out of shock. But when he didn't, Thomas twisted impossibly in their captors' grip, braced his feet against the cell's frame, and pushed off with all his might, ripping his arm out of Rick's hands.

The door slammed in their faces before they could reach for him again.

Rick tried to tell himself that he survived last time. That despite being thrown from a helicopter, tortured and left alone in the rain, Thomas lived. Thomas came back.

 _I_ _'ll be right back_.

Like he was just stepping outside for a smoke.

Rick clenched his fists and dug his nails into the palms of his hands until they bled so that he could not longer feel the memory of Thomas ripping himself away.

 _Just wait for me_.

"Yeah, Thomas. Wait for you. 'Cause what the fuck else am I gonna do…?" he muttered under his breath.

He was prepared, he thought, to wait for days for Thomas to come back to them. They'd waited before. They could wait again.

Except now his nightmares had actual memories to feed on. It wasn't just wondering, trying to convince themselves that maybe Thomas was just sitting in a different cell, alone but relatively unharmed, like they were.

Instead, now he dreamed of Thomas's cold, unmoving body thrown into the cell next to them. And in the nightmares, they couldn't reach him.

Less than a week (they thought) later, though, Thomas was returned.

He wasn't soaking wet, or cold to the touch, but he kept his legs pulled up, close to his chest, and his feet off the ground as he was roughly carried, one hand under each arm with bruising force.

When they threw him in, he curled up further, hissing as his feet hit the dirt. Rick pulled him upright, but only just, his recently rough-shorn scalp slick and damp with sweat pressed against the underside of Rick's chin.

" _Shit,_ Thomas," Nuzo cursed, looking at Thomas's feet, rubbing a hand across his head. "What did you do?"

Thomas's teeth were chattering, but while his skin was cool and clammy, it wasn't like touching a block of ice like last time. "It-it's f-fine," he protested.

Rick turned to look and Thomas's hand latched onto his, squeezing painfully tight.

"D-don't t-touch," he protested, pulling his feet away from TC and Nuzo as they tried to take a look. "It'll be f-fine."

"Oh, kid, you are hell and gone from _fine,_ " Nuzo whispered. Even TC looked faintly green.

It was then that Rick noticed the blood.

It seeped, dark and red from underneath Thomas's feet, pooling alarmingly quickly in the dirt. Rick blinked. It wasn't just in the dirt. It was covering TC's hands as the bigger man yanked off the outer pocket of his BDU pants, pressing the torn fabric against Thomas's feet even as he tried to pull them away. It was seeping into the fabric of Nuzo's pants.

There was _so much blood_ …

Something short circuited.

Rick saw more than his fair share of blood. Growing up, witnessing the ugly half of his family's 'business', more than a few fights and being a scout sniper - he thought he was mostly immune to it now.

It'd never been someone he cared about.

And never one that he couldn't do a goddamned thing for.

He didn't even notice his grip on Thomas was tightening until he felt Thomas's fingers on his arm.

"It'll be fine," Thomas said, quietly enough Rick doubted the others even heard him, but slowly and pronounced, forcibly talking around the stutter from his still chattering teeth. He gave a wan smile, a fraction of his normal grin, and it took a moment for Rick to really connect the visual with what Thomas said.

"Who are you trying to kid?" Rick snorted. "Hope you don't expect me to fucking carry you when we escape."

When. _When_ we escape.

Because the alternative didn't bear considering.

There could be no _if_ , or he would only think of all the ways that was more likely than _when_.

"Nice to see you're taking your self-preservation seriously."

Thomas laughed, a puff of air from cracked and bruised lips, "Stole a radio."

For a moment, Rick's heart soared. It was the closest thing to hope they'd had in weeks. If Thomas managed to get a message through…

As suddenly as hope soared, it plummeted back to Earth, and Rick swallowed back a sob. Even if Thomas managed to steal a radio, _then what_? There was no signal inside the caves. He would've had to get out, by himself, and somehow get a call through on an open channel that he didn't know who was listening in on, and convey a position he didn't know to people who may or may not believe him.

"Sorry," Thomas whispered, ducking his head away and breaking eye contact with Rick. "I just…I didn't have time…"

Rick could've kicked himself, and made a mental note to concentrate on his own reactions. Thomas took on guilt and responsibility like sinking ships took on water. He didn't need a reason to think he _needed_ to. "No. Don't worry about it. But what'd you steal it for if you knew you couldn't call anyone? Nothing could have been worth this."

"Yeah," agreed TC, who forced his tone lighter, as if they were just ragging on one another on the mess decks. "The hell were you thinking?"

"It was Rabbit's."

Well, shit.

"I didn't steal it to use it, I _broke_ it."

Rick almost laughed. He kinda did. He pressed his forehead against the top of Thomas's head, smothering a near hysterical giggle against his hair. "'Course you fucking did."

Because it's pretty fucking hard to use a radio against the enemy if it's in pieces.

They bickered while Nuzo tried his best to patch up the lesions across the bottom of Thomas's feet, and it seemed to distract Thomas - and if he was honest, Rick himself - and for a moment, the bars were gone. They weren't in cages, they were at Greenie's, listening to Nuzo bitch them out about something stupid they'd done. The more they ragged on one another, the more Thomas's grip lessened on Rick's sleeve. The inanity of the argument even had him joining in at parts, and it served to divert Thomas's attention away from anything Nuzo might be doing with their limited supplies.

It was a small moment of normalcy in their shared Hell.

The weeks passed slowly by.

Thomas's injuries healed, though slower than before.

They slept in shifts, two on, two off. Circadian rhythm was shot to hell, and no one knew if it was day or night. The lights were always on. Even exhausted, sometimes Rick couldn't sleep for days under what had become their artificial sun. A thousand times worse was when the power went out, the generators having run out of fuel, or just some new form of white torture by their captors. The dark so thick and absolute, it was impossible to tell if his eyes were open or closed. It was thick and oppressive, pressing in from every angle. Rick had never been what one would call _claustrophobic_ , but he would swear the darkness made the air thicker, the cage smaller, and until he reached out blindly for his friends, only managing to breathe again when his fingers closed on familiar skin and ragged material, he felt like he was completely and utterly alone.

As bad as the dark was for Rick, it was worse for Thomas. Thomas, who spent wherever he was when he wasn't with them in a space so small and dark that the cages were considered 'roomy and bright', refused to let go of them in the blackness. Nightmares had him bolting upright, latching onto them with bruising force. He didn't scream. He hardly made a sound. And the silence of his panic made it worse, because Rick didn't want to imagine why Thomas's nightmares were without sound. It was hours before his mind would stop racing, his pulse was no longer in his throat, convinced that the moment he shut his eyes, he would be somewhere even worse.

It was then that Rick started up their language lessons, joking that for all of Thomas's worldly languages, the two of them only shared one, and that just wasn't right.

The lessons were soothing, a back and forth ease that sounded like they were merely reading off cue cards for a vocabulary test in school.

They started off harmless enough - ' _estoy como una cabra_ ', or an idiom that translated 'I'm a little crazy' even if literally it compared one to a goat, and 'ke manu pū!' which was the Hawaiian version of 'May the Force be with you'. As the days dragged by, each of them getting slowly more proficient in the other's language, the sentiment changed.

No longer were the questions 'where is the library', but ' _quiero ir a casa_ ' - _I want to go home_.

They were quiet admissions that neither would ever voice aloud for the others to hear, but the privacy afforded by a foreign language made the confessions easier. Sometimes, Rick wondered if Thomas was even aware of what he would say aloud in the dark.

Rick wondered if he did the same.

Thomas never mentioned it, and neither did he.

They got sick. All of them. They didn't need mirrors to know how badly they were faring. They could see it in each other's faces. Nuzo and Rick's pale skin sallowed to a sickly yellow. Their appetites waned. The little food they were offered made Rick's stomach roil like he was trying to swallow something alive, and eating became another form of torture. Fevers came and went, along with bouts of nausea so fierce they couldn't keep water down.

TC was the first to point out their vision was beginning to fade, and Rick could hear the fear just under the mildly irritated tone. If TC lost his vision…how was he ever going to fly again?

The longer it went on, the less they could keep to shifts. It felt like as soon as one took over, the other was being shaken awake for their turn. They were cranky and irritable and snapped at one another more than once for things they immediately apologized over. Everybody knew. Everybody understood. It was hard to have a positive outlook when your clothes no longer fit. When you had a headache and a stomachache and even your bones seemed to turn against you.

Thomas was taken again.

This time, when he was returned, he shook and coughed and wheezed as his lips turned blue and his fingertips whitened as he fought for air through the pneumonia that settled in his chest, soaked through from the rain outside.

Every night, Rick stayed awake while Thomas slept, willing every rattling breath to not be his last. The cells were too small for anything to resemble privacy, and they slept pressed in close against one another like rats in cages, and for the first time, Rick was almost glad. The warmth of the others pressed in close was sometimes the only reminder that they were still alive.

 _We can make it,_ he repeated to himself. Over and over. Because if he stopped for even a moment, he would drown in all the reasons why they wouldn't. His fists tightened in the back of Thomas's threadbare and too loose t-shirt and pressed his forehead against Thomas's now prominent shoulder.

 _We can make it_.

* * *

::insert Loki sound clip:: Ta daaaaaaaa! Anyway, as always, let me know what you think, and feel free to come find me on Tumblr disappearinginq.


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